The Twelve Numb3rs of Monkmas
by Bob Wright
Summary: Dead Civil War reenacters are the least of Monk's concerns on Christmas vacation to Gettysburg.  Luckily he has the Eppes brothers to help him out this time.  NOW COMPLETED.
1. Mr Monk Meets the Eppes Brothers

THE TWELVE NUMB3RS OF MONKMAS

BY

BOB WRIGHT

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Part of me was a little concerned about doing another "vacation" story of sorts, and another holiday tale at that. In the end, however, I decided the story I had in mind was original enough to run with it. I hope you the readers don't find anything too repetitive over the course of the work. Of course, after eight tales, it gets a little harder to be absolutely original, but I pledge to do my best. Again, reading previously stories in the series may help to get you acquainted better with this one.

Adrian Monk and all related characters and indicia are registered trademarks of USA Network, Mandeville Films, and Touchstone Television. Numb3rs and all related characters and indicia are registered trademarks of CBS/Paramount Television, Scott Free Productions, and the Barry Schindel Company. And now, as always, sit back and enjoy the story.

* * *

"There we go, like a glove," Adrian Monk commented, shifting his car into park. He'd been trying to parallel park into the space in front of the restaurant his wife had asked to meet him at for a good twenty minutes or so. In the process, he'd accidentally smacked into the cars in front and behind him fourteen times and had used up about a quarter of the gas in the tank. Finally, however, the car was in the space absolutely straight, exactly the way he wanted.

He hopped out and surveyed the damage to the bumpers of the cars next to his. The head and tail lights had taken a beating, but nothing he couldn't easily fix. First, however, Trudy was waiting with the information he'd waited so long for, so he did his best to suppress the urge to immediately fix the lights.

He strolled into the restaurant, stopping briefly to readjust the lone coat hanging on the coat rack and move it to the center peg. The restaurant was deserted except for a disreputable-looking man wearing a jacket labeled MEMBERS ONLY in the corner booth, whose head shot right up at the sight of the detective. "Excuse me, sir," Adrian hailed the bartender, "Did my wife come in here yet?"

"She stepped out for a moment," the bartender informed him, "She did order dinner, though."

He placed a bowl in front of Adrian. "Onion rings?" the detective frowned, "Why would anyone in their right mind have them?"

He shrugged and pulled his tweezers out of his tuxedo pocket. Slowly, he began separating the onion rings, stacking the perfect ones in one column, those with deformities on another, and so on.

He glanced back over at the man in the corner. Something didn't quite seem right about him. The look in his eye was downright murderous. Even more suspiciously, his hand was inside his jacket pocket, as if he didn't want anyone to see it. The sooner they got this over with, Adrian reasoned, the better.

It was then that the bells over the door rang. He smiled as Trudy walked over to where he was seated at the counter. "I, I hope I wasn't too late for you," he said, giving her a big hug.

"Of course not," she returned his smile, "I think a little music's in order for the occasion."

She walked over to the jukebox, inserted a quarter, and pressed a few buttons. The opening strains of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" cranked to life. "Why that one?" Adrian frowned again as she sat back down.

"It just seemed to fit," she told him, "You don't need to do that with the onions, Adrian, it's OK, really."

Adrian nodded and put the tweezers down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man walk into the bathroom. He was digging something out of his other pocket. "So, this is it?" he asked Trudy quickly, "Everything I ever wanted to know?"

"You've waited long enough for it," she told him, "I think everyone has."

"OK, tell me then, what happened on that day?" Adrian shot a quick glance at the bathroom. Any minute now he'd be back out again.

"Adrian," Trudy leaned towards him as the music reached a crescendo, "I was killed by..."

And then everything abruptly went black. "No, no, no, don't do this to me!" Adrian screamed into the darkness at whoever might be listening, "Some, Somebody plug the cable back in, quick! It can't end this way! I have to know! Everyone does! Somebody please, plug it back in!"

"Adrian? Adrian, come on, wake up," came the soft, masculine voice in front of him The detective opened his eyes to find his brother staring at him. "Adrian, we've landed," Ambrose told him.

"Landed?" Adrian frowned, confusedly glancing around the airplane he was in, which was pulling up to an unfamiliar terminal, "How can we have landed? We were still back at the gate; I was having a sip of Sierra Springs..."

His gaze fell on the stewardess walking up the aisle; it was the same one he'd had an infamous run-in with before. "It was you," he raised his hand to stop her, "You dropped something in my Sierra Springs when I was checking the bathroom, didn't you? YOU DRUGGED ME, DIDN'T YOU!?"

"Would you preferred if I'd shot you, sir?" she told him without an ounce of emotion, "Now remain seated until we come to a complete stop, or else."

She strode off before he could continue the argument. Half-panicked, Adrian leaned over the seat. "She drugged me, Natalie," he gasped at his assistant, "Quick, call the medics, I need a stomach pump, A.S.A.P.! I need..."

"Mr. Monk, it was only a mild sedative," Natalie Teeger told him calmly, "It's already out of your system. After the fuss you caused on the flight back from Philadelphia, it was probably for the best, too."

"The best!?" Adrian continued ranting, "That unscrupulous woman just put my life in mortal peril, and you say it's for the best!? You agreed with Dr. Kroger that you'd respect my wishes from now on; he witnessed you signing that document for...!"

"Monk, come on, don't start," came the firm voice of Captain Leland Stottlemeyer from across the aisle, "I want to enjoy this break. Here we go," he rose to his feet as the stewardess waved their aisle up, "Natalie put your stuff in the overhead bin, folded and ordered like you wanted it."

Adrian nodded softly and popped the bin open. "Hey don't feel so bad about the pill," Ambrose tried to reassure him as he pulled himself out of his own seat, "It was probably for the best that you slept the whole way, really, given that we went through a heck of a lot of turbulence over St. Louis, and the plane was rocking wildly back and forth..."

"AMBROSE!" Adrian raised a hand to make him stop. Just thinking of turbulence made him feel sick to his stomach. He put on his coat, which had been folded very neatly inside the bin-he had to give Natalie credit for remembering that-and followed his group towards the door. The terminal of the Harrisburg International Airport was decked out in holiday splendor when he emerged on the other side of the causeway. It had been exactly two months ago that his father had called to outline his ideas for Christmas vacation, since they had all by in large enjoyed the trip to Philadelphia with him they'd taken over the Fourth of July. His father's suggestion this time had been Gettysburg, which he'd said he'd visited once as a child and had now taken up residence there. Adrian had reservations, but had agreed in the end to join everyone on the trip-he doubted he could have survived completely on his own anyway. Thus, he'd had spent much of the previous week cataloging everything he felt was necessary to bring with him-which, as usual, was pretty much everything he owned.

He caught sight of his father waving to him now from over by the baggage carousel. "Merry Christmas, boys," Jack Monk greeted both his sons, giving them a simultaneous handshake, "How was coming over?"

"Uh, I'm not too sure, Dad, I, I sort of slept the whole way," Adrian admitted, waving for Natalie to give him a wipe, "You?"

"Just fine, just fine," Jack nodded.

"Here's the rest of the mail that came for you since July, Dad," Ambrose eagerly handed his father a thick stack of mail. "Uh, Ambrose, I thought we agreed you didn't have to keep collecting these for me," Jack told him slowly.

"Just thought you'd like to keep informed," the instruction manual writer told him, "I've, I've really been looking forward for this."

"So have I, Ambrose. Christmas with two of the greatest kids anyone could wish for. Speaking of which, Adrian," Jack turned to his younger son, "I saw you busted a big whale poaching syndicate not too long ago; it was all over the news here."

"We, we got lucky; the one suspect plea bargained and told the court everything to put the ringleaders away for the next twenty years," Adrian told him.

"Mr. Monk made friends with a whale too," Julie leaned over from behind her mother to shake Jack's outstretched hand as well, "We brought the pictures if you'd like."

"Of course I would," Jack smiled at her, "Everyone else here? Where's the Doc?"

"Dr. Kroger couldn't make it; he's taking his family to Hawaii for Christmas," Adrian explained, walking over to a fake plant nearby and fiddling with its leaves for no apparent reason, "Seems to be a popular destination. I dreamt I went there a couple of months ago."

The buzzer for the carousel went off, and suitcases began sliding down the chute. "Well, once we get all your stuff ready, we'll head on off to my place," Jack continued, handing Stottlemeyer his first suitcase off the carousel, "As I might have told some of you, I found a new career; motel management."

"Sounds interesting," Lieutenant Randall Disher remarked, picking up his own bag. He was wearing reindeer antlers that made bypassers gawk at him, "What made you choose that?"

"I met up with an old friend of mine a few months ago after the trucking company went under," Jack explained to him, stacking Adrian's suitcases in a straight even column once they started appearing, "Art and I were on the route together for seventeen years. Anyway, he told me he was making a mint running a roadside stop out by Grand Teton, and I should look into it. So when I chose to settle down here in the Gettysburg area, I looked around, and lo and behold, there's a place for sale about ten miles east of town. I bought it with what savings I had left, brought in the crew to renovate it, and voila, I'm pulling in a fortune within two weeks. People who can't find a place to stay in town come out and fill up the rooms. I can only imagine what I'm going to make next year when Reenactment Weekend rolls around...how many of these things did you bring again, Adrian?"

"Oh, I'd say around fifty," Adrian guessed, "Can't, can't be too careful at Christmas, you know."

Jack shrugged. "And before I forget," he dug through his pocket and pulled out a wrapped present, "One of my guests was your pal the rapper, Adrian. He stopped by in late September on his way to a gig in Philly. He told me to give you this as a token of his appreciation for clearing him."

Adrian ever so slowly opened the present along the tape lines. "Oh, it's MurdeRuss's latest album, 'Lord of the Machine Gun,'" he announced, glancing over the track listings, "Featuring, 'Retirement Home Massacre', 'Pop That Cop', Suitcase of Severed Limbs', 'Driving Over Miss Daisy', 'Blood in the Gutter', and 'My Agent's a Homey.' Just what I always wanted for Christmas."

He reached for the suitcase now third from the top of his stack, opened the lid, and slid the CD inside so it lined up with the various other square objects inside. It took about ten more minutes for every single piece of luggage to be collected and loaded onto the baggage racks Jack had purloined for their use. "This way then," the aspiring hotelier waved them towards the door, "I had two of my own shuttles reserved just for us."

"You can afford your own shuttles too?" Natalie was impressed.

"Comes in handy for folks who don't want to waste gas going out to the battlefield and back," Jack explained, helping to load her own rack into the back of the shuttle marked MONK'S ECONOMY INN, "I hire a couple of people out for it, so that brings in a couple more bucks too. I'd say...Ambrose, are you all right?" he noticed his older son was shivering heavily in the crisp early evening December air, "Didn't you bring a coat?"

"Well Dad, up till now I haven't NEEDED a coat," Ambrose pointed out, "I'll be just fine, though, since I'll just be in the room the whole time."

"Ambrose, this is Pennsylvania in December; you can't go out without a coat," his father pointed out, "Mrs. Teeger, you want to help me go look for one in the terminal? I think there's a shop by the Continental gates."

Natalie nodded. "Come on, we'll get you something nice and warm," she told Ambrose, gently taking his hand. Adrian watched them disappear back inside. "I told him so," he remarked to no one in particular, "An IQ of 207, yet he can't bother to bring a simple coat. If I didn't..."

His gaze abruptly fell on the ridge across the causeway. "What is it, Monk?" Disher followed his glance.

"I could swear someone was standing atop that hill looking at us," Adrian pointed.

"There's no one there now, Monk," the lieutenant pointed out. Indeed, the ridge was now deserted. Adrian's eyes narrowed. Had it been his mind? "Don't worry about it, Monk," Stottlemeyer patted him on the shoulder, "It's probably just some guy who can't find his car."

The captain took a deep breath. "Fresh country air," he said in contentment, "I really needed this after everything that happened over the last few months. Nice change of pace, don't you think, Monk?"

"The snowdrifts, they're all uneven," Adrian pointed at several snow banks flanking the terminal, "That's, that's the downside with December; it's going to be hard to fix all these...and what's up with these tires?"

He bent down and examined the grooves of Jack's tires to make sure they were all even. Stottlemeyer rolled his eyes. "On the other hand, some things never change," he remarked to Disher, "I wish those sleeping pills had a longer effectiveness period."

* * *

"That house there, they messed up the light patterns," Adrian pointed to the Christmas display on a rather large home along the side of the road, "We should stop and inform them."

"Mr. Monk, we're all tired, we want to get to the motel," Natalie told him as patiently as she could. She turned to Ambrose in the exact center of the rear seat of the shuttle (as Adrian had vehemently asked for, to keep it even). "Holding up all right?" she asked him.

"Very well, thank you," Ambrose returned a warm smile. He clutched the only coat they'd been able to find for him-a rather loud black and white striped woman's fur coat that Cruella de Vil wouldn't have been caught dead in-tighter around himself and glanced at the rural scenery flying by outside. "Nature," the instruction manual writer commented, "A very interesting concept. Maybe I'll get to like it in the end. Then again, maybe not."

"You will," Julie reassured him. She leaned forward toward the driver's seat. "They've arrived already?" she asked Jack.

"Three days ago," Jack told her, "He seemed quite eager for you to show up, in fact; I think he considers you one of his best friends now after everything you've done together for Adrian lately. Of course, they're not the only ones there; a couple other interesting people are staying for the holiday from out west, and I think their stories might make for...and here we are now."

He eased the shuttle into the parking lot of what was now Monk's Economy Inn. "Interesting," Adrian remarked, noticing that roof was decorated with a large menorah (with three candles already lit), an Advent wreath (also with three lit), and a Kwanzaa candelabra (unlit).

"Yep, figured the best way to appeal to travelers was to cover every religious festival this time of year," his father explained, "You're in rooms 24 through 27, that's right by the office."

"But the candles are starting to melt from the heat," Adrian pointed, "I can't sleep if they're like that. If you've got a ladder, could you get it out so Natalie can go up there and fix it?"

"Absolutely not," she frowned at him.

"Well I'm not going up there," he protested, "It's cruel and unusual..."

"All right, all right, promise I'll fix it as soon as possible," Jack told him patiently. "Might as well tell everyone you're here.."

He walked over to Room 24 and knocked hard on the door. "We're back," he announced out loud. The door slowly opened and a familiar face appeared in the crack. "Took you long enough," she told him, sounding almost but not quite cross.

"Uh, merry Christmas, Sharona," Adrian greeted his former assistant, "You're not under the weather, so I know before I...?"

"Two words Adrian: severance pay," her tone was undeniably cross with him, "Fork it over right now. I'm tired of waiting after two years of you making excuse after excuse."

She shoved a hand in his face. "Um, I, uh, would if I had it," Adrian mumbled quickly.

"All right, how much did he bring?" Sharona turned to Ambrose.

"Two thousand seven hundred and forty-three dollars," the instruction manual writer commented, "And thirty-seven cents."

"Fifteen hundred right now Adrian; it went up every month you didn't give it to me," she demanded. Adrian sighed and placed the money in her palm. He leaned towards his brother and muttered under his breath, "I'm going to strangle you..."

"Ah, Sharona," Disher stepped forward with a big goofy smile at the woman he once had a crush for, "I have an early Christmas present for you."

He held up a large bouquet of orange chrysanthemums. "Willst thou be mine holiday date?" he proposed.

"You never do learn, do you?" Benjy appeared from behind his mother, rolling his eyes, "She's not for sale."

"Just thought I...oh, never mind," Disher slowly stepped back and tossed the flowers into the bushes.

"Amd how's TV's best writer doing lately?" Natalie gave Benjy a warm smile.

"Pretty good, Mrs. Teeger; with everything Julie's been giving me lately, I think we're set for at least six years as long as the ratings remain good," Benjy shook his "partner's" hand, "And come to think of it, maybe I'll branch out; some of the other people who showed up here..."

"So, the famous Adrian Monk's staying here for Christmas too," a thin black-haired man stepped through the door of the room next to the Flemings', "Benjy here said you'd be coming. I'm Agent Don Eppes, FBI, Los Angeles sector; we hear of your exploits a lot down in L.A. even before your show became a hit."

"Good, good to know word gets around," Adrian casually shook his hand, then waved at Natalie for a wipe, "Hope you're just as successful in what you do."

"Oh, I have some help," Don reached back into the room and pulled forward a wild-haired man in semi-formal attire, "namely from the greatest mathematical mind in all the continental U.S..."

"So now I am the greatest on the North American continent?" the long-haired man half-joked, "It was never further than the L.A. Basin all those years. Adrian Monk, good to meet you too," he also shook Adrian's hand, "I'm Professor Charles Eppes, and we're..."

"THE Charles Eppes?" Ambrose was very intrigued, "The same Charles Eppes that published the paper on the inverse theorem of cotangential space relationships."

"That's me," Charlie shook the instruction manual writer's hand firmly, apparently not noticing the confused glances everyone else was giving Ambrose, "Nice to meet you, Mr..."

"This is my brother Ambrose," Adrian stepped forward and him formally, "If, if you watch my show, you're going to meet him formally in a couple of weeks, I think, maybe."

"Are you kidding? I don't miss it for the world," commented a third man in the room, an older man with graying hair, "It's just about the only show on TV worth watching these days. Alan Eppes," he gave Adrian hand a hard shaking, "I used to work in city planning."

"Could, could you pull some strings then and ask them to realign the streets in Los Angeles?" Adrian proposed, "It's not quite a perfect grid."

"So, anyway, the Eppeses here signed up for rooms for the holidays about a month ago," Jack cut in, lugging several pieces of luggage from the shuttle, "What they do's almost as interesting as what you do, Adrian; indeed, Benjamin here's most interested in recording their exploits for possibly something down the road, I noticed," he nodded towards Benjy, "Anyway, anyone want to give me a hand with these?"

"Sure, we'll be out in a minute," Stottlemeyer nodded. He sided up to Sharona as everyone hustled towards the door and whispered in her ear, "Before I do, I think you should know some things. In private."

"Sure," she followed him out the door and around the back of the motel. Adrian tagged along behind; he knew he had to be present for the moment as well. "All right, you should know that some divers found a body just south of the Golden Gate last week," the captain said softly once they were completely alone, "Now it's going to take at least another week before all the ID testing's complete, but what we've got right now matches Trevor's DNA almost exactly. So you can start sleeping easier at night; he is dead after all. Here's the proof if you can verify it."

He handed a large manila envelope to her. Sharona slowly looked at each paper inside. She nodded very slowly, a look of deepest relief crossing her face. "This is Trevor all right," she said softly, "So I...I guess I should be..."

"It's closure," Adrian finished the sentence for her, "Closure always helps a lot. I should know; I'm still looking for it. The funny thing is," he looked puzzled, "I almost feel sort of sorry for him."

"You?" her eyes went wide, "You, who would have happily suffocated him with your own hands, feeling sorry for him?"

"It, it was a couple of things, really," Adrian admitted, kicking at a nearby snow bank that was very lopsided, "One thing, I guess meeting my own father again made me realize how important a father is in a person's life. Plus, I did have a dream the other night where he was accused of a crime he didn't commit, and he sort of came across as sympathetic there. It made me see another side to him. He did love Benjy till the end, so you can't really fault him for that. Of course, that doesn't really excuse him for having you kidnapped and trying to kill you, then blowing up our houses and consorting with terrorists and trying to kill all of us, but I guess I understand him a little more now. Who knows, maybe there's another reality out there where he is a complete innocent. Maybe there's infinite realities with infinite possibilities, like all those stories about me they have on the Internet."

Sharona stared at him in wonder. "How big a dosage of sleeping pills did they give him on the plane again?" she asked Stottlemeyer.

"Not enough, I figure," Stottlemeyer shook his head as he watched Adrian measuring the length of branches on a beech nearby, "That aside," he continued, "How've you been lately?"

"Good," Sharona admitted, "It's a little hard dealing with people hounding me on the streets asking for autographs, but I tell myself at least it won't last too much longer. Once they switch over to when he hired Natalie..."

Stottlemeyer nodded, shaking his head as Adrian started scraping at the branches with his file, "Benjy keeping busy?"

"More than you can imagine," she looked a little bittersweet, "He's actually got a steady girlfriend now. He wanted to bring her along, but she couldn't make it."

"Um, they, they haven't been having...you know..." Adrian started humming loudly in nervousness at that very thought.

"Not yet, but I'm keeping my eyes open at all times," the nurse said firmly, "Her name's Becky; I think you'd like her if you got the chance to meet her."

She extended a photo towards her former employer. Adrian nodded; Becky at least physically seemed like the kind of girl he might-MIGHT-have had a crush on when he was younger and before he met Trudy. "Well, better go get unpacked now, or it'll be morning until we're done," he said quickly. The three of them trudged back around to the front of the motel. "You get number 27 all to yourself, Adrian," Jack told his son, pointing to the large stack of Adrian's luggage in front of the room in question. The Eppeses were helping take several of them inside. "Just, just be sure to keep them in order," the detective told them, "They are numbered; it's rather important."

"Well it's kind of hard to miss," Don pointed out the very large numbers on the suitcases. Adrian went in the room and opened Suitcase Number One. "So, I take it you two work together a lot?" he inquired, placing Trudy's picture on the nightstand as usual.

"We have a lot more over the last few years," Charlie switched two suitcases into the correct numerical order, "And I've come to really enjoy it, in fact."

"So you're into mathematics, then?" Adrian started dusting the radiator.

"Where have you been?" Ambrose stuck his head in through the door, "Professor Eppes happens to be one of the greatest mathematical minds in the country today. I've read all of his papers."

"Since obviously you've got nothing better to do on a sunny day, being inside all the time," Adrian muttered under his breath, examining the wallpaper for whatever reason.

"I'm glad someone reads them," Charlie smiled at the instruction manual writer, "Anyway, FBI cases often prove to be fairly simple to solve once the patterns of the crime become apparent. Every crime involves the same mathematical principles as everything else we do in life."

"If only it all were that easy," Adrian grabbed a bottle of window cleaner, "See if you can find me a clean rag; whoever was in here last smoked too much; I can see the nicotine residue here."

"Uh," Don searched through another suitcase, "Right here. You know, I'm more like you," he told the detective, "I like to find the cold hard facts at the scene. Not quite as elaborately as you do, though." He glanced at Trudy's photo. "Any luck finding who killed her lately?" he asked sympathetically.

"No," Adrian shook his head sadly, "Haven't had a break in a good long while. I'm, I'm really starting to wonder if I'll ever..."

He sat down on the bed and cradled his wife's picture close to his chest. "Hey, don't give up just yet," Don tried to reassure him, "All it takes is one little break; I've seen it happen before. You'll find the guy someday."

"I hope," Adrian mumbled softly. He stared longingly at Trudy's smiling face. "Well, better, better get back to work," he said quickly, reaching for the window cleaner again, "It's Crimestoppers night tonight, and my week to call in."

"No it's not," Ambrose protested loudly, "You had it last week."

"No, Ambrose, leaving the house has clearly blown your microcircuits," Adrian rebuffed him, "It's my turn."

"Hey, just because I almost threw a fit leaving the house this afternoon doesn't mean I've lost my senses," the instruction manual writer told him firmly, "But since you're going to be an island on the whole thing, go ahead and call. I'll still beat you to it."

He disappeared from the doorway. "Don't, don't mind him," Adrian told the Eppeses, "You probably won't see him for the rest of the week; he's probably going to seal himself in his room. Agorophobic," he added when he noted they looked confused, "Until this year he'd only left the house twice in the last thirty-five years."

He wiped the windows down. "Might, might as well let him call, though," he conceded, "It'll give him a feeling of accomplishment, given that we probably won't have much more excitement this week."

* * *

"Talk!" a shadowy man was demanding at that very moment in a darkened room to another man handcuffed to a chair before him.

"I've told you everything!" the captive man pleaded desperately.

He was slapped across the face. "I think not," his jailer growled, "We've got ways of getting you to tell us everything!"

"Please, don't...!" his prisoner begged before getting another slap. A second man appeared next to the first. "Any luck?" he asked.

"He's probably spilled everything he does know," the first man shook his head, "It's not much to go on, but at least we know something."

"All right," the second man thought things over, "Give him another one-over. I'll go ready everything. We'll take care of what we can right now. Nothing to worry about. They won't find anything out."


	2. Battlefield Casulaties

"...so then we realized that the kidnappers really planned to use Burddick's interpretation of Riemann's Hypothesis to steal from banks and other financial institutions," Charlie was relating inside the shuttle the next morning into the tape recorder Benjy was holding up to him, "So we devised a plan wherein we fed them false information--a dummy key if you will. We then traced their power usage once they went through our fake firewalls, and Don went in and took them in."

"That's really impressive," Natalie was quite intrigued.

"At least we got the girl back safe," Don added, "It wouldn't have been worth the time and effort if we didn't succeed there."

"I've never thought of how you can solve a case using those principles," the former bartender continued, "But I guess there's a lot you can do if you know how."

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again," Charlie told her, "Math is the very language of nature. Every little thing we do abides by its priciples, whether we realize it or not. If you look closely, you can find every pattern imaginable to fit our behaviors and actions."

"I, I like that," Adrian nodded firmly, "I like it when things go nice and smoothly and predictably."

He glanced out the window. "The ticket window at the minature golf course over there's open two inches," he pointed, "We'd, we'd better go over and fix it."

"You can actually see that from out here?" Don was seriously impressed, "Looks like you really are that good after all."

"It's, it's a blessing. And a curse," Adrian admitted, "How, how about it, Dad, you want to turn back so we can get it set?"

"Speaking of miniature golf," Jack seemed more willing to change the conversation's focus without completely deviating from it, "Natalie told me you actually went golfing with her back in September, Ambrose."

"Uh, yes, I did," Ambrose nodded eagerly, "She called to invite me along. I enjoyed it, but she didn't, since Adrian insisted on centering the balls with every single put."

"And what's wrong with that?" his brother raised an eyebrow, "I think it would be common courtesy for people who go golfing to center the balls each time."

"He also complained that the holes weren't straight," Julie informed the former trucker, "Mom was ready to choke him by the sixth hole."

"Well, that's an improvement, Adrian," Jack told his son, "I remember when we went golfing when you were five, you had your mother over the edge on number three."

"Ev, Every little bit helps, I suppose," Adrian shrugged, "Ambrose, he did good, though. That makes twice he stepped outside since Labor Day; Natalie also convinced him to come over for her mother's birthday a few weeks ago."

"I, I hope you're proud," Ambrose glanced at his father with a hopeful look. "Of course I am, Ambrose," Jack patted him on the shoulder, "And you'll do good today, too."

"I hope so," the instruction manual writer said slowly, "Because I can tell you now, I don't feel all that comfortable out here. I really should..."

"Ambrose, if you say, 'I've got to get back to the house' one more time, I'm pitching you through the window," Adrian gave him a firm look, "AND making you clean up the glass."

His gaze fell out the window again. They were entering Gettysburg itself now. The detective was admittedly impressed by the cheerful atmosphere the town was giving off at first sight, like a Norman Rockwell painting. It was a place he thought Trudy might have liked to come to if she were still alive. He noticed as they rounded the traffic circle in the center of town that several of the branches on the large (exactly forty-five feet) Christmas tree in the middle of the circle were too long, but he'd go fix it later in the day.

He couldn't help suppressing a large yawn. He had only gotten about three hours of sleep, having spent all night making sure his room was perfectly clean and unblemished and at right angles. It had been worth it, however, since there would have been no other way he WOULD have gotten to sleep. Tonight he intended to do the same with every other room in the motel.

"So, what are we doing first again?" he asked his father as he pulled into the parking lot at the main visitor's center.

"Let's go check the schedule first," Jack strode over to the building and read the posting on the outside bulletin board, "Oh, good, a reenactment up on Cemetery Ridge in a half hour. I'll go see if you have to get any tickets for it. You can go look around, Adrian."

"Um,..." Adrian's gaze fell on the fields of snow, which bore loads of footprints that weren't even remotely even, "I'd, I think I'll just wait here, thank, thank you."

"It's just snow, Monk," Stottlemeyer had popped out of the second shuttle, which had pulled in next to the first one.

"Exactly," Adrian nodded firmly, "And as you can see, Captain, it's already been spoiled. It's ruined until the next snowfall."

Stottlemeyer exchanged a glance with Disher, then shook his head in resignation and followed Jack into the building. Adrian flicked at the second shuttle's antennae. "I think it's perfectly all right," Alan told him, closing the shuttle door behind himself.

"Got to be sure," Adrian told him without turning around. The former city planner shrugged and walked over to the first shuttle. "Aren't you coming outside?" he asked Ambrose, still seated in the rear.

"I'm just good here, thanks," Ambrose said quickly, "In fact I'm already over my limit. I shouldn't really be here."

"You've been saying that since you stepped off the porch back in San Francisco," Adrian finally abandoned the antennae, "Don't worry too much about him, though," he assured Alan, "We've, we've worked out a system where he can see the sites of trips in comfort, so he'll be good even if he can't leave the car."

"Um hmm," Alan nodded, noting the cell phone which Ambrose held up for his convenience. "Care for a stroll while they're checking in, Monk?" he asked, examining the same park Adrian just had rejected.

"The snow...?"

"Hey, look Monk, if you can walk into a sewer, snow should be no problem," his new friend raised an eyebrow, "Now what do you say? Just five minutes."

Adrian thought it over. "Well, I guess it won't cause imminent death," he reasoned. He followed Alan into the park, stepping ever so carefully into the already created footprints as if he were walking through a minefield. "So, you say you like watching the show," he asked, almost losing his balance trying to step into a deep bootprint, "Which one so far do you like the best?"

"That's tough," Alan scratched his head, "There's been so many good ones. If I had to pick a favorite, though, it would have to be where you were on stage; the way you seized up trying to catch the killer..."

He laughed hard to himself at the memory of watching this. Adrian's brow wrinkled; it wasn't one of his fondest memories. "Well, I, I guess it was worth it in the end," the detective shrugged, "Jenna Ryan did end up getting fifty years for the murder. I wouldn't do it again, though, not unless they cleared the theater first."

He stumbled, but managed to catch himself before he toppled into the snow. "I, I would like to tell your sons thanks for their help last night," he told Alan, "They did good with the moving."

"Well I raised them to care for others," the city planner said, "Perhaps having their own show's a reward. I just wish Margaret could have been here to see it."

He sighed deeply. "Your wife," Adrian said, prompting Alan to look at him in amazement, "You don't take your wedding ring off either, do you?"

"I guess that's another reason I like watching the show," Alan admitted, "I guess I can connect with the horrible sense of loss you have."

"I've gotten lots of fan mail from people who say they find inspiration in how much I still care for her," Adrian told him, "I'll admit it, I don't like how so many people blow off marriage these days. When you say, 'I do,' you commit forever. It's not..."

A snowball abruptly zinged by his face, sending him into sudden convulsions. "Medic!" he whimpered, wiping at his face even though the snowball hadn't touched him.

"It's all right, Mr. Monk, you're not hurt," the children popped up from behind a set of trees.

"Wipe...germs...cold...wet...germs!!" he moaned loudly, continuing his full-fledged panic.

"Come on Mr. Monk, deep breaths," Julie gave his coat a hard tugging.

"Yeah, just relax, you'll live," Alan added. Adrian forced himself to follow their advice and soon was calm again. "Do you have any idea how dangerous those things can be?" he asked, leaning against a nearby monument.

"It's just frozen water, Mr. Monk," Benjy crumpled up another snowball for his benefit.

"And lord knows what else," the detective added, swiping at his pant legs even though they weren't wet, "I never understand why young people want to engage in such reckless activity."

"Hey, don't knock it, Monk," Alan told him, "You're only young once, you might as well enjoy it, I say. Charlie would agree probably, going to college at thirteen and all."

"You're only young once," Adrian repeated. He couldn't help gazing at the children. It was hard to believe the young boy and girl he'd known were now sixteen and fifteen respectively. Time went by so quickly anymore, it seemed, and he wasn't always entirely comfortable with it, particularly given how Trudy never aged in his mind. If only there could be ways to freeze time and avoid change...

"Say, is that Albert Woolson behind him there?" Ambrose's voice crackled over Julie's cell phone, snapping his brother out of his thoughts.

"Why it is," she examined the base of the statue, "...dedicated to Albert Woolson, the last survivor."

"Died 1956, age 106, the last confirmed Union survivor," Adrian added.

"How about the last Confederate veteran?" she asked him.

"It's open to debate since many people falsified their birthdates to get Confederate state pensions," Ambrose interceded, "Traditional credit went to Walter Williams, who died in 1959, but that's since fallen under scrutiny. Several other claimants for the title include Felix Witkoski, died 1952, age 102, William Bush, died 1952, age 107, William Townsend, died 1953, age 107, Thomas Riddle, died 1954, age 108..."

"Bus just showed up, boys," Jack called from over by the visitor's center, "Time to get moving or we'll miss the tour."

Adrian flashed him a thumbs-up. The four of them trudged back, Adrian still trying to avoid stepping in actual snow. "Since you're so good with that, how about the last veterans of other wars?" Benjy leaned towards the phone, interested.

"Of this country's declared conflicts?" Ambrose inquired, "Of the Revolution, George Fruits, died 1876, age 97..."

"No, no, you're way off," Adrian corrected his brother, "He was pretending. It was Daniel Bakeman in 1869."

"Oh really Mr. Smarty?" Ambrose retorted, "Check the facts; Fruits was verified by the D.A.R."

"But he was never on pension, and Bakeman was," Adrian countered, "Maybe less time on that chessboard and more time actually reading these things would do you good."

"I'm not having this argument," Ambrose threw up his hands.

"You started it by feeding two innocent children false information, Ambrose."

"Of the War of 1812," Ambrose decided to move on, Hiram Cronk, died 1905, age 105. Of the Mexican War, Owen Thomas Edgar, died 1929, age 98. Of the Indian Wars, Fredrak Fraske, died 1973, age 101. Of the Spanish-American War, Jonas Morgan, died 1993, age 111. Of the surviving veterans of..."

"What is this!?" Adrian pointed in shock at the bus, which was being swarmed by close to fifty people or so, "They didn't tell me this many were going. I'm not getting on that thing if it's that crowded."

"Look at it this way, Adrian, it'll only be for about five minutes," Jack informed him, "They'll all spread out once we get off. Would you like the top or the bottom deck?"

"Oh bottom, definitely bottom," Adrian said quickly, "Aisle seat, too...no, wait, window...aisle...window..."

"Adrian, just get on the bus," an already frustrated Sharona seized his wrist and hauled him on board. "You're, you're not still upset that I came in at three in the morning asking you if you'd brought spare cleaner with you?" he asked.

"Why would I be upset, Adrian? Given that you wrecked my whole night and gave me only four hours of sleep and made me reconsider why I even bothered coming here? Why would I possibly be upset? Now stay."

She pointed at an aisle seat on the left side of the bus. Adrian obediently sat down. "Looks like she's still got your number after all this time," Disher remarked from behind him.

"Feels great, doesn't it?" Adrian remarked, "The holidays are always better with everyone around."

His eyes jerked out the window. He'd thought he'd seen another person staring at him, this one from behind a tree. But no one was there again. Adrian was starting to get a little nervous. After having faced off with a man who had the power to become invisible in Philadelphia, he'd been jumpy whenever he'd heard strange noises, even though Vasily Karponov had been verifiably killed following his failed bomb plot. It was almost as if it was a sign that something ominous lay ahead.

* * *

"Just look at it all," Adrian pointed at the clumps of reenacters mulling about on Cemetery Ridge, "Don't they care about forming even formations? If I were George Meade, I'd drum all these people out of the service." 

There was a low irritated snort from Stottlemeyer to his left. Adrian paid no attention. He swiped at his pants, frustrated that they the viewers had to stand in five inches of snow. "So, since you're a mathemetician and all, they can divide all these troops evenly?" he asked Charlie to his right.

"With about eight thousand on both sides, it is possible," Charlie reassured him, "So don't worry."

He drew a pack of gum and swallowed a stick. "You know, I attended one of these at Princeton," he informed the detective, "It is intriguing to see how commanders choose to deploy their men, using mathemetical principles based of the probability of strength and odds."

"I, I suppose," Adrian nodded. He leaned towards Don and asked, "And he sees everything like this?"

"Ever since the day he was born," Don told him.

"Shhh, they're starting," Jack held up a finger. Adrian turned around to see the reenacters were finally starting to join up into nice even ranks. The Union forces started marching forward across the ridge, playing patriotic music on their pipes. "Ready!" shouted the mock Confederate commander to his men standing behind the fence directly in their path, "Aim! Fire!"

The Confederate opened with a strong barrage. The Union troops let out a cheer and rushed forward towards the graycoats' position. Adrian winced as several cannons fired. "Have they no decency for our eardrums!?" he shouted out loud, "Hey, you there!" he directed his attention at the Union troops, "You're breaking ranks! Stay organized for the love of God! You can't...!"

There came several louder cracks of rifles. Several Union captains fell. Adrian's brow furled. "Something's not right here," he proclaimed.

"Blanks cause no damage, Mr. Monk," Natalie tried to reassure him, "Not even powder marks. Now come...Mr. Monk, where are you going!? Come back, they're not...Mr. Monk!?"

Adrian, in spite of the snow, had sprinted onto the field towards the fallen men. "Whoa, cease fire!" came the loud cries from across the field. Slowly the barrage ceased. "Hey, what do you think you're doing, pal!" demanded a large Confederate colonel who stepped into his path, "This is off limits to bystanders!"

"Come on, Monk!" Stottlemeyer caught up to his associate, "We don't..." he trailed off as his gaze fell on the fallen men. "Hang on, is that blood?" he asked, noticing large patches on their chests.

Adrian nodded worriedly. There was no sign of movement from any of the men. A hushed crowd gathered around as the colonel checked their pulses. "He's right; they're dead," he proclaimed out loud to loud gasps.

"All right, everyone stay right where they are, FBI," Don had also joined them, flashing his badge, "Who fired the fatal shot?"

"I don't know; the colonel now looked grief-stricken, "It could have been any of us...I thought we checked the ammo!"

"Maybe," Adrian announced, "But this was no accident. This was cold-blooded murder."


	3. Ghostly Actions?

"Yes, yes, we have taken in the entire company for questioning," the sheriff for Adams County said exasperatedly into his telephone, "Yes, I accept the responsibility, but would the public prefer I do nothing? Tell them everything will be sorted out in due time."

He hung up and sighed in frustration. "What a day," he muttered to himself, "They're going to really eat me up for this." He turned to face his visitors. "It's Monk, right?"

"Yes, I'm, I'm Adrian Monk, and this...well I guess you know everybody by now," Adrian gestured at his associates, "Well, except for Natalie; she joined about three and a half years ago."

"Natalie Teeger, I'm his partner," she shook the sheriff's hand, ignoring Adrian's raised eyebrows at the higher status she'd given herself. She then turned towards Sharona and extended her hand. "We agreed fifty dollars?" she asked with a triumphant smile.

"Adrian's having a bad influence on you," the nurse grumbled, handing over the money regardless. "Are you two doing something we should know about?" Disher asked them.

"We had a bet going that Mr. Monk would find a case within twenty-four hours after arriving here," the former bartender explained, "I won."

"Agent Eppes, F.B.I.," Don introduced himself to the sheriff in the meantime, "This is Professor Charles Eppes," he pointed to his brother, "He sometimes consults on these things."

"Sheriff Lance Gregory," the sheriff introduced himself, "I can't tell you guys how big this is; the press is already up my back for arresting almost two hundred men. I'm already backlogged with a load of other cases, and..."

"It was the plumber," Adrian announced out loud, staring at the topmost unsolved case paper on Gregory's desk.

"Huh?" the sheriff spun and stared at the paper.

"He had motive and opportunity," the detective explained, "He hanged Mr. Jones and made it look like an accident."

"Well I'll be," Gregory exclaimed, examining the paper closely, "I never saw that, and I searched that crime scene from top to bottom. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Well, that's one less thing to worry..."

"The mother-in-law," Adrian said once the unsolved case underneath became visible. Gregory examined this one as well and nodded in surprised consent. "The neighbor," the detective continued once he saw the next case on the stack, "...a roving transient named Reginald Fontaine...the superintendent...the judge...the cab driver...his sister...the chef..."

"I don't believe it," Gregory exclaimed, now holding the entire stack in his hands, "You just solved nineteen cases in twenty seconds. We didn't make any progress on them for months."

"You, you don't happen to have one more so it can be an even twenty?" Adrian inquired.

"Nope, this is it," the sheriff shook his head.

"Drat," Adrian shook his head.

"Anyway," Don cut in, "We were there when the shootings happen, so any help you could give us on this would be greatly appreciated."

"Well, the dead men are Phil Seiderbaum, Bill Burroughs, and Ted Norman," Gregory held up the case file for everyone to see, "Phil's from around here, the other two are professional reenactors that came in with the troop from out of town."

"What was this Phil Seiderbaum like?" the F.B.I. agent asked him.

"Quiet, introverted type from the couple of times I met him," Gregory explained, "He wouldn't be the type to cause anyone trouble, so why he got shot, your guess would be as good as mine."

"There's something not quite right with this," Adrian proclaimed, staring at the autopsy report.

"Which is...?" Don leaned over his shoulder.

"Look at the bullet angles into their bodies," the detective pointed out, "They go almost straight up into their chests. There's no logical way any of the men on the Confederate side could have hit them like that; they would have had to have been flat on their stomachs to have had this kind of shot."

"And they were all upright when the shots were fired, I remember," Charlie spoke for the first time. He walked over and examined the evidence himself. "The physics on this are rather unusual," he remarked, "It's almost as if the shooter were right underneath them. But that's impossible."

"Unless the shooter was invisible to begin with," Disher abruptly proposed.

"Oh dear God, no," Stottlemeyer slapped his hands to his face, "You did not just propose than an invisible man shot those people."

"Well, he could have been lying on the ground and no one would have noticed," the lieuenant pointed out, "Why, is something wrong with that?"

"No, nothing's wrong at all. Would you excuse me for a moment?" the captain walked towards the restroom and closed the door. Moments later there came a loud crash inside, followed by repeated thumps, as if Stottlemeyer was pounding his head off the wall. This went on for a good two minutes before he emerged again, looking much calmer. "What do you think, Sheriff?" he asked Gregory.

"Well, this is very interesting," Gregory looked at the papers, "I don't know much about physics, but now that you point this out, it does seem strange they all got hit like that. Maybe the bullets ricchoted. Or perhaps even..."

He looked puzzled. "Even what?" Don asked him.

"Oh, nothing," Gregory shook his head, "Just...well, I don't think you'd believe ghost stories. I don't either, but some people around here hold them dear, things about spirits needing..."

Just then the door to the squad room burst in. A quartet of large men in formal suits and dark glasses casually strolled in. "Are you in charge?" the apparent leader of the group asked Gregory.

"I'm Sheriff Lance Gregory, yes."

"Agent Breckinridge, CIA," the man flashed his badge, "You're ordered to turn over all information on this case to us right now; this is now under our jurisdiction."

"Wait a minute, this is my town!" the sheriff protested.

"Then perhaps you'd like contempt charges and a lengthy jail sentence brought on you," Breckinridge threatened him, gesturing for the case file. Gregory reluctantly handed it to him. "Out," Breckinridge pointed towards the door, "All of you."

"Eppes, F.B.I.," Don looked insulted at having been trumped, "I witnessed this crime, and..."

"We don't care," the largest CIA agent told him off, "We're in charge now, and you're not to interfere. Now out or we'll throw you out. And don't touch me or else," he threatened Adrian, who was reaching for the man's tie. "It, it's crooked," the detective pointed out.

The man jerked a finger towards the door. Everyone slowly shuffled out. "Can you believe those clowns!?" Stottlemeyer could barely contain his venom once they were out of earshot, "This is why I hate government agencies; they parade around like they own the whole world, and don't give a damn about the people involved in these cases."

"And they don't bother straightening their ties either," Adrian added. As he left the building, a man bumped into him. "Sorry," the newcomer apologized quickly.

"Don't mention it," Adrian took the man's wrist before he could walk away. "Sheriff, arrest him, he vandalized the miniature golf course."

"Huh?" Gregory was confused.

"The roof on the ticket window was painted a specific shade of yellow," the detective explained, "He's got paint flecks of that color on his sleeve."

He pointed these out. Gregory immediately flashed his badge and searched the man's pockets. Several cans of graffiti and several packs of money were inside. "Would you like to explain this?" he asked the suspect.

"Uh..." the man stammered, cornered, "They...they ripped me off over the summer!"

"You have the right to remain silent..." Gregory took the man's arm and led him back into the building. "You're really on a roll," Natalie commended her employer.

"And I'm, I'm happy now; now I've solved an even number of cases today," Adrian touched the nearest parking meter. Next to it, the shuttle's door opened. "So, how'd it go?" Jack asked his son.

"Good and bad, mostly bad," Adrian explained everything they'd discovered to his father, including the CIA's unexpected intervention. "Go figure," the hotelier shrugged, glancing at the rest of the group inside the shuttle, "Well, I guess order of business number one would be to figure out who had the best chance of making those shots."

"There just might be a way to do that," Charlie announced, "Given the proper equipment I could run an algorithm based on the various factors at the scene of the crime that could reveal the person with the best chance of hitting the three of them. Only I need a proper computing system that could run that kind of equation."

"My laptop's back at the motel," Benjy offered.

"Thank you, that's very kind, but I'm going to need a computer with far more power than the average laptop," Charlie shook his head.

"I've got a proposition for you," Jack raised his hand, "I know the head of the tech department at Gettysburg College; his in-laws were some of my first guests once I opened the motel. He usually stays over the holidays; I can give him a buzz and see if he's got any gizmos that'll work for you."

"All right, that'll work," Don nodded in agreement, "You take Charlie over there and see what you can work out with that. In the meantime, we can still go check out this Phil Seiderbaum and see what if anything he knew."

"And hope the Cental Lack of Intelligence is dumb enough to stay put in that station," Stottlemeyer added, tossing a contemptuous glance back up at the window above them. Two pairs of dark glass-covered eyes glared down at them, making Adrian feel very uncomfortable.

* * *

"Again, we'd, we'd like to offer our deepest apologies for your loss, Mrs. Seiderbaum," Don told the dead man's widow a short time later. 

"Thank you, it's just...I can't..." Mrs. Seiderbaum completely lost it. She gave her nose a hard blow and unconsciously handed Adrian the tissue. Adrian freaked and flung it hard towards the nearest garbage can. "Wipe, wipe, wipe!" he gestured frantically at both assistants. Natalie handed him one. "It's going to be all right, Amy," she told Mrs. Seiderbaum sympathetically, putting an arm around her, "I know exactly what you're going through. Exactly."

"If, if it's any comfort, he didn't suffer much," Adrian said, "The bullet basically shredded all his vital organs in three seconds and caused massive bleeding in..."

"ADRIAN!!" Sharona gave him a harsh glare as Mrs. Seiderbaum burst into more hysterics, "You're the most hideously insensitive man on the planet!"

"Uh...thank you," Adrian said, not really sure what else to say. He wandered across the room and stared at the parakeet merrily chirping away in its cage, unaware that its owner was never coming back. "When, when was the last time you cleaned this out?" he asked the still distraught Mrs. Seiderbaum.

"So, Amy, did Phil know a Bill Burroughs or Ted Norman?" Disher asked her to quickly shift the conversation away.

"If so, I never met them," she shook her head, "I never heard either of those names before."

"Did he exhibit any strange behavior over the last few days?"

"Well," Mrs. Seiderbaum looked as though she was hoping this question would come up, "About two nights ago, Phil came back from the rehearsal for the reenactment, and looked kind of pale, as if he'd seen a ghost. I asked him if anything was wrong, and he said no, he was fine, they'd simply had an intense rehearsal. Later that night, I woke up after midnight and found him at his desk, working on something. He said it was some math project for a friend's child, and that's what it looked like; a lot of numbers I couldn't make sense of. I let it go, maybe I should have..."

She broke down again. "Sorry," she sobbed, "But Phil was the kindest, most decent man I ever met. He saved my life when I was sixteen. I was always in the popular crowd when I was younger. Phil was a shy introverted kid. He always had a crush on me, but I was too clique-conscious, and I really mistreated him sometimes. Then one night in March of that year, I went out with several supposed friends to a party on Little Round Top. A lot of alcohol flowed there, and I had a little too much. I don't remember too much until the point I fell off one of the ledges. I landed in a boulder field and broke both legs. I cried out for someone to help, but none of them ever came. They all ran, afraid they'd be blamed for it. It got very cold and started snowing. I was freezing to death, and I would have preferred death given how much horrible pain I was in. But then Phil came. I don't know how he got there, but he found me, and he took me to the doctor. He never left my side all night either; he stuck with me and reassured me everything was all right. So from that moment on we were inseperable. And now he's...at Christmas..."

"You said he had some kind of papers with numbers?" Don's eyebrows went up, "Do you mind if we go upstairs to look for it?"

"Go right ahead," she nodded. The F.B.I. agent waved for Adrian, who was rearranging the figures on a Nativity scene on the mantle. "What do you think?" he asked the detective as they went up the stairs.

"I think she needs serious assistance in her time of grieving; there's no way she can maintain the cleanliness of this place in her current condition,"Adrian griped.

"No, I mean on the case," Don gave him a strange look, "What do you think Seiderbaum was up to?"

"I'm not sure yet," Adrian shook his head, "I need more proof to work with. You don't suppose what the sheriff said about the ghost stories had anything to do with it?"

"Hey, I don't believe in ghosts either, but everything's worth looking into at this point," Don shrugged, "Well, if we find that paper, maybe Charlie can figure out what the numbers mean once he's done with the algorithm."

An extensive search of the Seiderbaums' bedroom, however, proved fruitless, for no papers with numbers were anywhere to be found. The two of them even picked every bit of paper out of the wastebasket--Adrian grimacing in discomfort as they did so--but none of them fit the description they'd been given by Seiderbaum's widow. "Well, that's that," Don thew his hands up when they were done, "Maybe he took it with him when died. Maybe that's what's got the CIA so eager to smother this case."

"Could be," Adrian straightened the Christmas decorations hanging in the window, "In the meantime, however, I've got to get back to the motel and take a long shower; going through the garbage takes a lot out me."

* * *

"I'm contaminated," the detective continued grousing as his assistants pulled back up in front of the motel--he'd insisted much to both their displeasure that they both accompany him back, "I told you to isolate me with the plastic curtains I brought." 

"Oh I don't think we'll get sick from being around you, Mr. Monk," Natalie could barely contain her frustration.

"You'll be sick from the garbage I was exposed to in no time," Adrian complained, "You do have extra soap in case I need it?"

"You won't need extra soap, Adrian," Sharona practically flung his motel key at him, "Try and finish up in ten minutes, if that's even remotely possible for you."

"Ten minutes? I'm not a superhuman," Adrian shook his head, "This'll be at least three hours, minimum. Wish me luck." He stumbled comically towards his door and unlocked it...

And let out a shrill scream. "What, what is it?" Natalie ran up to him...and found herself seizing up as well. For Adrian's room had been completely trashed. Furniture was overturned, the sink was overflowing, and even more garbage had been tossed all over the place. "Oh dear mother of God," she breathed, "Who could have...?"

Adrian screamed again, louder. He dashed over to the nightstand and sank to the floor, where Trudy's picture lay. The glass had been smashed, and the picture torn apart. Adrian's eyes rolled back into his head, and he started shaking crazily. "Mr. Monk, come on, don't go crazy on us!" Natalie took his hand. Adrian did not respond, "Quick, Sharona, get something, anything!" she cried to the nurse, "This is serious!"

"Wait, what's that?" Sharona barreled into the room, "Is that blood?"

Sure enough, it was. Written on the wall in the blood was the words:

CRAZY ANTHONY WAS HERE


	4. Crazy Anthony

Jack burst in through the door of Adrian's room. "Thanks for calling, ladies," he told the women, "How's Adrian doing?"

"Not good, not good at all," Natalie pointed at her employee, who was still in the middle of his pseudo-seizure from the huge mess. "Anything yet?" she called to Sharona, frantically dialing her cell phone.

"If Dr. Kroger's there, he's not picking up," the nurse said, dialing the number again, "I wish he'd chosen a closer location so we could have him at a moment's notice."

"And you're sure you know nothing on how to snap him out of it? You handled every single one of his medical needs, real and imagined, for seven years; surely there has..."

"Just because I covered his medical needs doesn't mean I understood any of them!" Sharona practically snapped at her. "Come on, pick up for the love of God!" she shouted at the still silent cell.

"Adrian, it's me, your father," Jack walked over and shook his son hard, "I know this has been traumatic for you, but it's no reason to do this. Adrian, come on, I know you're in there, talk to me."

Adrian made no sign that he'd heard any of this. The door bursting open heralded Stottlemeyer and Disher's arrival. "How's Monk!?" the former said breathlessly.

"This is serious," Jack shook his head, "I think seeing this mess gave him a total nervous breakdown."

"Water, "Disher realized, "Maybe that'll snap him out of it. You've got a bucket somewhere?"

"Yeah, there's one under the sink in the maintenance closet," the hotelier nodded. Disher scurried off.

"Wait, wait, I think he's coming out of it!" Natalie raised her hand. Adrian's lips were slowly starting to move. "My eeleef just passed before my yays," he mumbled softly, "Need help? Get a clue."

"Huh?" everyone in the room frowned at this nonsensical statement. "Say that again, Monk?" Stottlemeyer leaned into his face, "And try and make sense, please?"

"Keep your dansh on the elwa," Adrian continued rambling, "Watch that troomclickee. There's an ert in the glith. I know who killed Trudy and why."

There was a sudden hushed silence in the room. "You do?" the captain was amazed, "Who did it, Monk?"

"It was very easy in the end," Adrian went on almost robotically, "I don't know why I didn't see it before. It's clear the killer had..."

"I'm coming, Monk!" Disher ran in with the bucket and tossed the water into Adrian's face. Adrian sputtered loudly. "What happened?" he asked out loud, "Where am I?"

"Back in the hotel," Natalie took his hand, "You said you knew who killed Trudy?"

"I did?" Adrian frowned, "What did I say?"

"You were about to tell us."

"Uh..." Adrian's thought hard. His expression went south; he knew nothing while conscious. "You!" he glared at Disher, "You couldn't have waited just five more seconds!?"

"Oops," Disher admitted sheepishly, placing the bucket behind his back. Adrian glanced down at himself. "I'm wet!" he gasped, leaping around like a kangaroo, "Why did you have to get me wet to wake me up!?"

"Hey, you got the bath you wanted, Adrian, don't knock it," Sharona told him sarcastically. She walked up to Jack as her former employer seized a set of still-closed briefcases and dashed into the bathroom and asked him, "Do you have any idea who Crazy Anthony is?"

"None in the least," Jack visibly shivered at the blood-red words on the wall, "I have no idea what this is all about. How did they even get in? I saw Adrian put the key in his pocket before he left; how could..."

A look of realization crossed his face. "Let me check a moment," he said hastily, running out the door. A minute later, he was back looking somewhat guilty. "I have some blame in this," he admitted, "I left the master key to all the rooms right on my desk; somebody took it and used that to get in here; it's not there anymore."

"Any visible fingerprints?" came Adrian voice from the bathroom over the sound of zippers being zipped up.

"Not from what I can see, Adrian," Jack told him, "You need anything in there?"

"No, but take these to an isolated location and burn them for me," Adrian opened the bathroom door the smallest of cracks and handed his wet clothing--all bagged now--to his father, "They're contaminated now; I can't wear them again."

Jack shook his head and handed the clothes to Disher. Toss them in the dryer around back," he whispered to the lieutenant, "Maybe he won't notice the difference if we do it well enough."

"Oh I'll know," Adrian had heard the whole thing, "Believe me, I'll know." He emerged from the bathroom dry and fully reclothed. And with a radiation suit and gas mask on. And having encased himself inside a ludicrously large plastic bubble. "All right, the next question, Dad, is who had access to your office?" he inquired in a barely audible voice, pushing his arms out through the openings in the front of the bubble and groping into the closet for his all-purpose claw.

"It could have been anyone here," the hotelier admitted, "Especially if I left the door unlocked."

"It could have been a while ago that they nabbed it, then they bided their time," Stottlemeyer pointed out, "Was anyone suspicious checked in here over the last few days?"

"About eight percent of my business comes from drifters and other homeless types looking for one-night lodging," Jack told him, bending down to help Adrian with the garbage he was picking up with the claw, "Let me get that, Adrian. It's about time I do something for you for a change."

"If, if you say so," Adrian thought he heard Sharona let out a low snort at his father's suggestion. "So, so then it could have been unrelated to us," he reasoned out loud, "Someone could have gotten drunk, snatched the key, and gone on a rampage in here. Maybe since..." he stumbled backwards onto the bed, walking being somewhat awkward for him in the bubble, "I mean, we could check each of the rooms one by one once we clean this mess up, which should take about, oh, nine years at the minimum. In the meantime, we should do check on who Crazy Anthony is."

"Wait, your brother's with Professor Eppes at the college, that means he's right by a computer," Natalie realized. She bent down towards Jack. "What was the number he gave you again?"

"555-9999, extension 2233," Jack reminded her. Natalie dialed the number. "Hi, it's us," she greeted Ambrose, "Listen, we've just had a crisis here; could you look up something for us?"

"Someone wrecked Adrian's room, didn't they?" Ambrose guessed.

"How did you know that!!??" she was deeply impressed.

"He has blessings and curses too," Adrian leaned towards the phone, "That's 'Crazy Anthony,' Ambrose; surge protector, then power switch number one, then power number two, then Internet Explorer..."

"Adrian, I am quite knowledgeable on the operation of the average land computer," Ambrose told him firmly. After a few minutes, during which a computer could be heard booting up in the background, he announced, "OK, we've got Colonel Anthony Jefferson Gunnison, a.k.a. "Crazy Anthony." Commanding officer of the 217th Mississippi, noted seccessionist and segregationalist, with a reputation for undertaking reckless and even foolish actions on the battlefield. Says here that on the second day of the Gettysburg battle, Gunnison led his command on a suicide mission around Union lines without orders from Lee, attempting to strike it from behind and ruin their defenses ahead of General Barksdale's assault on Little Round Top. But Union sentries discovered him just before he could launch the attack, and he soon found Northern reservists pouring in from all directions. Since he steadfastly refused to retreat, the 217th Mississippi was quickly surrounded, and his men gunned down with casualty rates approaching eighty percent. Gunnison himself was the last to fall; once he finally ran out of bullets, he picked up the Confederate flag where it had fallen and swung that as a weapon at his attackers before over twenty bullets finally took him down for good. His dying words, issued to Staff Sergeant Joshua Laintree of the 44th Rhode Island, who also fired the final, fatal bullet, were, "Hell shalt spare no wrath for thy damned soul, traitor."

"Lovely, very lovely," Adrian said quickly. "Let me ask you this, Ambrose, have there been any stories about his ghost here on the battlefield? Just something we'd...stories they say..."

The clicking of computer keys wavered over the phone. "Oh my, is this interesting," Ambrose remarked to himself, "You're not going to believe this, Adrian, but first, the destruction of the 217th Mississippi occurred on the exact field that mock battle took place. And secondly, Phil Seiderbaum was specifically playing Joshua Laintree in today's reenactment."

A chill ran down Adrian's spine; something he couldn't quite place was making him very uneasy. "And his ghost?" he implored.

"On dark nights, anyone foolhardy enough to walk the grounds may find themselves face to face with Gunnison's vengeful spirit, ready to attack all whom he deems as Yankee traitors. Often eyewitnesses claim his ghosts screams out Laintree's name before disappearing into the night." Ambrose told him. "Oh, and one more thing; before his remains were moved to the National Cemetery, Gunnison was hastily buried after the battle by survivors of his regiment in the first spot they found on their retreat. Right under the motel."

Adrian's feet lifted off the ground. He still discounted the possibility that an actual ghost was to blame for the murders and the hotel vandalism, but still the thought of it unnerved him. Very deeply."

There was a clapping sound at the other end of a line. "Let me have that a minute," Charlie's voice told Ambrose. "I've got the conclusion to the algorithm right here, Monk," he told the detective once he was alone on the line, "Come on down and I'll show you what it looks like we're up against."

"I'll, I've got to clean my room, sometime, but yeah, I'll, I'll be there," Adrian rose to his feet and stumbled towards the door. And found he couldn't get through; the bubble was simply too big. He took the deepest breath he could, but that did not solve the problem. "Just unzip it, Monk," Stottlemeyer pointed out the obvious answer. Adrian wasn't listening. He was instead pushing for all his might to get through the door. "Natalie, Sharona, a little hand please? That's why they call you assistants after all."

"Only if I get the rest of the severence pay in 24 hours, Adrian," the latter said, folding her arms across her chest.

"And the promise you made two months ago to actually give me minimum wage," Natalie added, "And the insurance premium..."

"All right, all right, it's all yours!" he nodded furiously, "Now I'd like...WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!???"

Both woman charged into him from behind, sending him popping through the door on impact and punctuated by the bubble ripping loudly. "Great!" Adrian growled at the sight of this, "I only brought ten of these; the whole deal's off, you get no...!"

"FULL SALVO!!" the women had fistfuls of snowballs at their ready. Adrian gulped and barreled for the shuttle as the snowballs crashed into his backside.

* * *

"I can't believe you two actually did that," he was grumbling to the both of them when they were all seated in the computer lab at Gettysburg College for Charlie's presentation. 

"If you'd given me the severence pay from the beginning..." Sharona growled back at him.

"Come on Mom, let it go; the whole thing's not worth it," Benjy took hold of her hand, "Show them what you found, Professor," he called to the front of the room.

"Um, can, can I switch chairs with someone, preferably someone with my exact height?" Adrian raised his hand. When no one paid any attention, he shrugged and put it down. "Worth a try," he shrugged. Up front Charlie switched up a Power Point presentation. "All right, class, as you know the shortest distance between too objects is a straight line," he told them, flicking off the lights and causing Adrian to whimper in the darkness, "But because no one at the reenactment had a straight line to work with, we had to use other measurements. Maybe instead of straight line, the shot had taken a hyperbole. Or an acute angle. Or an obtuse angle. Maybe even something along the lines of L'Hopital's Rule."

He took a marker and drew a complex equation along the little remaining free space on the blackboards. Adrian would have liked to have pointed out that several of his Xs and Ys were somewhat deformed, but he didn't want to anger the women at the moment. "Then," Charlie went on, "with the help of my eager assistants (he nodded towards Ambrose and the children, bringing smiles to their faces), we loaded these possibilities into the algorithm of our own reenactment of today's reenactment."

He pressed the button, showing a green CGI field with blue and gray humanoid shapes on the left and right side (three of the "blues" had notable red marks on their chests) and red humanoids all along the bottom. "We've also taken into account such other factors as wind speed at the time, speed of the soldiers' movements, et cetera. Now take at what the numbers say, and tell me if you can find our killer or killers."

He stepped aside and pressed the button. The hyperbole simulation started running. Adrian watched as hard as he could at it, but not a single bullet came close to the exact fatal location the real victims had been shot in. He shook his head openly as the next three brought about the same result, with slight variations. Charlie stopped the presentation when it was done. "So our conclusion is...?" he asked everyone.

Julie's hand went up first. "The killer was nowhere on that field when they were shot," she proposed.

"Give this young lady a big hand; she's student of the month," Charlie slapped her hand over the sound of the applause. "Number two, our next order of business should be...?" he looked towards his brother.

"We scour the whole battlefield from top to bottom until we find something that tells us beyond a doubt who the perp was," Don said, clearly having set his mind on finishing the case quickly, "Thanks Charlie, you did real good here."

"Thank you," Charlie smiled deeply. It was the same smile Adrian had always flashed at anyone who'd shown signs of wanting to accept him. "Perhaps, perhaps even get under the battlefield, so, so to speak," the detective winced at the thought of so much dirt being flung around, "In case this is Crazy Anthony's spirit trying to get Joshua Laintree."

"Very good boys and girls, it is quarter to nine right about now," Stottlemeyer examined the clock on the wall, "Monk Senior's friend told them they need the bullpen here for ten next morning, so help clean it up as you go. We'll go do what we have to and meet back here tomorrow just before dinner."

"Hey, not to complain, but who put you in complete control, Captain?" Don frowned deeply at him.

"Donnie, Donnie, settle down now," Alan put a calming around around his son, "It's Christmas after all; time of peace and brotherly love."

"And, And snow falling unevenly in the streets," Adrian glanced out the window, having noticed this was indeed happening, "Oh boy, I'll have to put some overtime in on this." He hoped that "Crazy Anthony," whether living or dead, wasn't out there waiting for him.


	5. Christmas Presents

Adrian pushed his electrical mop across the floor of his motel room for what had to have been the twentieth time that evening. He was back inside the radiation suit and bubble, and sweating profusely for his efforts as such. He had no intention of stopping, however, until his room was returned to absolute spotlessness, for that was the only way he could sleep (even though it was four thirty in the morning already and sleeping would be brief at best at this point). He was almost done by now, the sink having been fixed, the garbage removed, and the blood flushed off the walls and painted carefully over (after, of course, he'd covered everything in the room with industrial plastic so the paint would only go where it was supposed to). Shampooing the carpet was the final task of the evening.

There came a knock on the door. "Is it OK to come in?" his father called.

Adrian shut off the mop. "Just, just wipe your feet and watch where you step," he told him. Jack slipped inside and admired his son's handiwork. "Just as good as new," he was impressed, "And you fixed that too."

He glanced at Trudy's picture. "No, I brought thirty of them, that was closest to the one the intruder tore up," Adrian told him.

"I see," Jack stared into Trudy's warm eyes. There seemed to be a certain amount of regret in his face that he would never get the chance to meet her directly. "So, I got the list of the guests over the last two weeks like you asked," he said, handing Adrian a piece of paper, "Any of them look like a guilty party?"

Adrian glanced over the list. "No, not immediately," he shook his head, "Did you meet any of them firsthand apart from signing them in? Any complaints?"

"This guy, I got a noise complaint from his neighbor, but ultimately he was harmless, just had too much to drink," Jack told him, "Maybe like you said it was just an accident; the guy was drinking, came in while I was out, took the key, and did what he did."

"I can't be sure," Adrian still had a sense of foreboding about the whole incident. He stared at the snow falling heavier than ever outside. "They, they are calling for an even amount, right?" he had to ask.

"No more than four inches the weatherman said," his father told him, "We may have to hold off an hour or so before we head back into town, but the roads still look like they'll be just wet."

"Four, four inches is good, nice and even," Adrian nodded. He knew he'd have to make sure the snow was smoothed over before he could leave, though. "So, have you been talking with...him lately?" he asked.

"I visited Jack Jr. two months ago," Jack sighed, "Unfortunately jail isn't helping him as much as I would have hoped. Someone's clearly been smuggling him more weed in there. Plus, he really doesn't seem to like you; he growled when I mentioned your name and turned to the wall and didn't talk to me for the rest of the time. I think it's been hard as on him to find out I had you as it was the other way around. He always wants to be the center of attention, maybe since I've been on the road a lot..."

He fell silent, his gaze returning to Trudy again. "I remember your mother always demanded the Christmas tree be set up the same way every year," he started reminiscing, "We couldn't deviate at all; the same balls had to be on the same branches, the lights wrapped around the same way, and so on."

"I do remember," Adrian sat down on the bed next to him, "I, I really liked that. After you left, though, she stopped doing it. I don't really think she cared much after that. I don't think she cared much about anything, really, and it was harder at Christmas." He unzipped the bubble and pulled up the radiation suit's hood so he could look his father right in the eye. "Your second wife," he said slowly and with pained words, "You never told me what she was like."

"Two words; living nightmare," Jack rolled his eyes, "Compared to her, your mother was an absolute saint as far as I was concerned. To spare you the details you probably don't want to hear anyway, we courted quickly and dissolved just as quickly and haven't spoken in eighteen years, and Jack Jr.definitely takes after her side of the family more. The less you know about her, the better."

Adrian nodded. Something else was gnawing at him. "So, the other Christmas, we got a note that you were proud of Ambrose and me for stopping that bomb threat," he stated, "That was you?"

Jack nodded. "Then why didn't you come inside?" the detective had to know.

"Because I chickened out at the last minute," his father admitted, "See, I was holed in at a rest stop in Sacramento while the alarm was in place, and once word got out you had defeated the terrorists' intentions, part of me got curious and decided to check in and say good work. I checked the phone book and found your address. But as I came up the stairs, I started seeing visions of you slamming the door in my face and telling me to get out of your life..."

"Which I would have at the time..." Adrian confessed.

"...it scared me," Jack told him, "I stood in the hall debating with myself before I decided I'd rather not put you through the trauma of it after what you'd been through the previous evening. So I scribbled out the quick congratulatory note you saw, knocked on the door, and left, telling myself it was all for the best."

"And yet you had no qualms about calling me up when your freedom was in jeopardy," the detective raised an eyebrow.

"One thing you'll learn, Adrian, is that people's decisions aren't always rationally black and white," Jack said, "There's usually a lot more than meets the eye to what we choose to do. I hope in the end that what I chose there didn't ruin your holiday."

"No, it, it was a good holiday all in all in the end," Adrian said, "That, that was the first time it snowed since Trudy died," he glanced forlornly at her picture, "She always loved Christmas. She felt it always brought out the best in people. When I was with her it brought out the best in me. I've tried to carry on, but it's just not the same."

There was a silence between the two of them. "Well, now that we've had our father-son bonding for the night--or morning, I'll let you finish up what you're doing here," Jack rose up, "The mailman'll be here any minute, so I'll go sort those out. Sleep well, Adrian."

Adrian gave his father a small wave as he walked out. After a moment's thought, he removed the bubble completely, unzipped the plastic sheathing around his coat from where it hung in the closet, slid it on, and stood in the doorway, watching the early morning scene before him. A lone truck roared down the road to the east, but other than that, the stillness was complete. Adrian took a a long deep breath. It felt good to be in a place with minimal air pollution for a change. Had the intruder not trashed his room, and if the case had not been on his mind all day, he would have been completely at peace at the moment.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Ambrose's light was still on as well. Intrigued, he walked over to Ambrose's room--being careful to flatten himself against the wall so that he left minimum impact on the otherwise pristine snow outside. Ambrose was seated at the table inside, midway through a three-dimensional chess game with Charlie--a good one, Adrian realized, for as far as he could see, they were pretty much in a stalemate. He knocked on the door and entered. "Who's, who's winning?" he asked, fiddling with the drapes.

"Neither of us could sleep," Ambrose admitted, leaning backwards as his brother once again centered every single piece on their squares, "So far it's one game for him, one for me, and two draws, so this is the tiebreaker. Galleon to E6."

He made this very move. With a wry smile, Charlie captured this piece with his princess. "You know, high-level criminal investigations are much like a chess match between two parties," he commented, "The criminals make their moves, and we use the most logical judgement we can think of to counter those moves, then they make the next move, and so on until the game comes to a conclusion one way or another. The key is to try and think several moves ahead and cover every base."

Adrian merely grunted, too busy rearranging the drinks in the freezer. "So, Professor..."

"Call me Charlie, Mr. Monk. I'm not a stuffy stickler for that, you know."

"Charlie, you wouldn't happen to have any idea of your own who could have killed them if no one could have made that shot?" the detective nodded in satisfaction and closed the door, "I'm still coming up with a blank myself. I'm wondering if maybe they were killed beforehand, and the shooting was a convenient cover for..."

"Not possible," Ambrose shook his head, "Their legs were very clearly moving of their own free accord at the beginning of the reenactment; the moment they fell was the exact moment they died."

Adrian closed his eyes and tried to visualize what he had seen earlier. "You're right," he conceded, "And it wasn't something detonated from inside either; those were definite bullet wounds. So with nothing else to go on, we're left with the ghost of Crazy Anthony Gunnison enacting revenge on someone playing the man who killed him, which makes no logical sense at all. Your bishop's exposed, Ambrose."

His brother glanced at the board and hastily moved it out of harm's way. "I doubt as much as you do that it was a ghost, but until we can reasonably remove it as a factor, we have to consider it," Charlie noted, pursuing it with a knight, "One thing you learn in my profession is that you never remove an equation until it's certain beyond a reasonable doubt that it doesn't fit into the big picture. Now if we could just find Phil Seiderbaum's number note that Don says his wife mentioned, maybe we could get something out of that."

"Ambrose, do you have any idea how filthy this bathroom is!?" Adrian half-demanded, staring in the door to it.

"Hey, I was going to get around to it, if I hadn't been dragged outside for the reenactment," Ambrose said defensively. Adrian felt his blood pressure go up. "Ambrose, I'm asking you once, do you want to be here or not!?" he said as calmly as he could.

"Of course I want to be here!" Ambrose shouted, prompting the person next door to yell at him to be quiet. The instruction manual writer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I, I mean...of course. Since you guys were all going and Dad was here...you really don't understand, Adrian, I don't want to be left behind. I don't want everyone else to have fun while I stay around at home and...I want to do this with you, Adrian. You are my brother, after all. I want to belong."

He hung his head in misery. "Hey, it's OK," Charlie reached across the table and patted him on the shoulder, "I know what you're going through, really. I've always wanted Don's company too. It's not easy being me. Everyone thinks you're so different when you're above the learning curve, and you just want to be normal. I'd look out the dorm window at Princeton and see everyday average people going about doing everyday average things and wanting to be with them. You feel...trapped."

His own expression crashed for a moment. "But look at it this way," he told Ambrose, "There's always people that care for you. I realize that now after working with Don's people. In fact over time I'd say they and the people I work with have become an extended family to me. Just like everyone around you is to you if you'd look close enough."

Ambrose's expression brightened a little. Adrian felt guilty for having blown up. "We, we do appreciate you, Ambrose, even if you drive me to pure insanity at times and make me wonder how we could possibly be related," he said quickly, "I, I appreciate you coming here."

"I'm not a cripple, Adrian," Ambrose reminded him, "I'm working hard to break this thing I have. It's not going to be easy, but I want to try."

For a moment, the two of them simply exchanged glances. Ambrose nodded and turned back to the board. "Anyway, Dad told me he'd like to try the Eisenhower Farm today," he said between a big yawn, "Since that's inside, I think I can manage; Natalie agreed to help if I needed anything."

"You know, I may not be as apt on human emotions as I am with math, but I think she may harbor some deeper feelings for you," Charlier told him. A huge flicker of hope crossed Ambrose's face. "I...well, I know she cares," he stammered out loud, "I don't know what she'd see in me, but if she did, I'd be happy to...I'd try...if she'd want to remarry again, I mean...she's a wonderful person, very wonderful, getting the presents for me and everyone and..."

"Presents, Ambrose?" Adrian's eyebrows abruptly shot up, "She never said anything about presents."

"Uh oh," Ambrose's expression dropped, "Wasn't supposed to say that; Natalie asked for me to keep it secret."

"Keep what secret, Ambrose?"

"The presents. You have a lot of presents coming, Adrian," the instruction manual writer admitted, "Everyone pitched in. They're in the maintenance closet around the back. Oh, forget the relationship now; I promised her..."

Adrian was no longer listening. He bustled out the door--again making sure to stay against the wall and keep the snow pristine--and inched along to the maintenance closet. It was locked, but he could make out through the crack a huge stack of presents. Most of them bore his name and were from everyone else; even Sharona had surprising come up with several gifts for him--he could even make out one that was from Ralph Hinkley and his class. The detective felt a strong pang of guilt. He had nothing to give these people in return for their generosity to him. And Christmas was merely days away.

He trudged back to his room, his head hung low. When he got back to his own room, Trudy was waiting for him. "Adrian, don't get depressed on me again," she begged him softly.

"They're right," Adrian mumbled softly, slumping down on the bed, "I am the most insensitive person on the planet. They've all been so wonderful for me, and I can't do anything for them in return."

"Now you know that's not true," she told him, putting a vaporeal hand around his shoulder, "You've done so much for each of them in your own way."

"If I can get presents, so should they," he rationalized, "But I don't know what they want or need. I know all of them so long, and I can't even read their minds on simple things."

"Adrian Monk," came a voice that the detective had never heard before. But he knew immediately who it was. "So you've decided to drop in on me now too, Mitch?" he asked the spirit of Natalie's husband, who had abruptly materialized in the corner in full Navy regalia.

"I felt you needed me," Mitch walked forward, "Really, I've been here all along, watching Natalie. You just haven't had reason to see me. Monk," he bent down to be at the detective's level, "Natalie doesn't need anything extravagent from you. It'll just take the simplest thing to show you care."

"OK, so she won't want anything expensive then," Adrian mumbled to himself, making obtuse hand gestures, "I've still got several hundred dollars left; maybe I can sneak into a shop if no one's looking. I'd better start making a list now or..."

"Monk, are you listening to me?" Mitch shuffled around to look him straight in the face, "Natalie doesn't need a present to know you care."

"But she will think less of me if I don't get her something, Mitch," Adrian countered. He suddenly realized that he had a golden opportunity to put Natalie's deepest fears to rest once and for all. "While you're here, Mitch, please tell me," he asked the dead man, "What exactly happened when you went down in Kosovo?"

Just then the door burst open. Both Mitch and Trudy vanished into thin air in seconds, much to Adrian's disappointment. Jack had returned, clutching the early morning mail in his hand. "I was in the middle of something important, Dad!" Adrian couldn't help upbraiding him.

"Adrian, you won't believe what arrived with this," Jack said, looking both excited and worried, "Read what this is."

He handed Adrian an already opened letter. Adrian pulled out the paper inside--grateful that it had been folded perfectly even--and looked it over. His eyes went wide with delight. "Wake everyone up, Dad," he instructed his father, "They've got to know that Phil Seiderbaum specifically mailed his number paper to me." His expression became muddled again. "But then, how would he know I was going to be here in the first place?"


	6. The Father Who Wasn't What He Seemed

"Monk, do you have any idea what time it is?" Stottlemeyer complained as he joined the others in Adrian's room.

"Yes, yes, I know, but we've got a lead now," Adrian held up Seiderbaum's paper. The captain squinted at it. Letters, numbers, and symbols covered every inch of the paper, with no discernable pattern. "If this is a lead, I'd rather be stuck in a dead end, Monk," he shook his head, "I can't make any sense of this at all. What would a human being write this for?"

"Maybe it's not supposed to be meant for humans," Disher proposed with a yawn, "This could just be the advance code for an alien invasion. Seiderbaum might have been a sleeper agent, sent to...captain?"

Looking frustrated beyond belief at his adjutant's latest insane theory, Stottlemeyer strolled over to Adrian's bed, seized the pillow, and jammed it over his face to muffle out the loud yell he emitted. "No, please, don't, don't do that!" Adrian protested, "Now I have to burn it and bury it far from civilization! I only brought twenty-five backups, you know!"

"Let me have a look at that," Charlie took the paper off the detective. He stared intently at it, a look of intense calculation on his face. "OK," he said slowly after a minute or two, "There is a code in here, but it's going to take me some time to figure out which symbol means which. Phil Seiderbaum's quite intelligent, I must say; by covering every inch of the paper, he greatly reduced the chances someone might crack what he's saying."

"But do you know why he chose to do it this way?" Natalie stared over his shoulder, her expression making it clear she had no idea what the message could possibly be, "What could be so dangerous that he needed to go to this length to send a message?"

"Believe me Mrs. Teeger, I have some codebreaking experience, and you would be surprised," the mathematician reminded her.

"Well, suppose whoever killed Seiderbaum and the others wants to kill someone else, it would be better to find something else to back up whatever this says," his brother said, "We still haven't asked what the other reenacters knew about them." He turned to Jack. "You didn't happen to notice whether they're still going to be there on the ridge today?"

"As it is, we'll be in luck," Jack told him, "The flyer said they'll be there through the end of the week, so once this snow stops and the plows get up to speed, we'll all go check it out."

"Good, that, that gives me all the time I need to fix the snow," Adrian was rooting through another suitcase. He produced a leveler, walked out the door, and began running it over the nearest snowdrift, leveling it as flat as possible. "You, you can go have breakfast," he told everyone else, "This is probably going to take a while."

* * *

"I told you, I wasn't done yet," the detective was complaining later as they walked among the encampment tents. 

"There'll be plenty of time to fix the snow, Mr. Monk, it's not going to snow again all week," Natalie told him firmly, "Right now we've got more important things to keep in mind." She turned to Ambrose, trudging alongside her with his absurd fur wrapped tightly around himself. "Holding up OK?"

"Uh...maybe," Ambrose's eyes were squinted tightly shut; he looked quite uncomfortable being completely outside. Neverthless, he trudged forward step by step, staying along with the others (although Alan had volunteered to take the children to a museum or two until the investigation came to a close).

"You're doing good, Ambrose, you're doing good," his father reassured him, patting him on the shoulder, "I always knew you could make it if you tried." He noticed the rather sour look Sharona was giving him. "Is there a problem with what I'm doing, Mrs. Fleming?" he asked defensively.

"Yes, I find one, but out of respect for him, I won't bring it up in public," she said firmly.

"I know what you're thinking, after forty years he doesn't deserve to try and do anything for us," Ambrose had read her mind, given the expression she flashed after he'd said this, "If this is how you feel, why didn't you bring it up in Philadelphia in July?"

"Out of respect for you and Adrian getting the moment you both earned, I stayed silent there, but that doesn't mean I feel for him in any way," she gave Jack a hard look, "There are limitations to how long you can...Adrian, don't you dare!"

The detective had started pushing a tent to line it up with others in its row, oblivious to the fact he was about to topple it over. The nurse pulled him away hard. "Adrian, don't start, it's been too long a morning already," she told him sternly.

"If they'd lined these things up properly, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place," Adrian strolled over to a Union reenactor watched incredulously and straightened the lanyard on his uniform. "You, you should be ashamed, a professional and all..." he started to chide the man.

"Hello, is there something goes on here I should know about?" a large heavyset man wearing a Union general's uniform approached. A man, moreover, with an eyepatch over his right eye. Adrian froze and spun around, unable to face this very obvious display of assymmetricality directly. "You're, you Eugene Collins, aren't you?" he asked softly, staring at the ground.

"Yes, I'm a veteran of over twenty of these reenactments over the last five years. I was selected to play General Theodore Douglas, commander of the 44th Rhode Island. Is this related to what happened yesterday?"

"Yes it is; Eppes, F.B.I.," Don flashed his badge, "Adrian Monk, private investigator," he gestured at Adrian, still trying to glance anywhere but at Collins, "Mr. Collins, how well did you know the men who were killed?"

"Only in passing," Collins told him, "I went over the drill routines last night with the entire company; that was the only time I saw the three of them together."

"Who would you say you know the best of them?" the agent continued.

"That would have to have been Bill Burroughs," Collins related, staring in wonder at Adrian, "That was largely because I got a couple of complaints from other people that he was rooting around in their tents, looking for something. He denied everything, but I was going to complain to the people in charge...is he all right?"

He pointed straight at Adrian. "Oh, I'm, I'm good, it's, it's the eye," Adrian said quickly.

"Oh that. That was an accident; someone fired a live round down at Cold Harbor, and I'm sorry to say I got the brunt of it," Collins admitted.

"He can't do anything with it like that," Stottlemeyer explained to the reenactor, "He needs two good eyes to be able to get anything out of this."

"Can't, can't we talk to someone else?" Adrian proposed. Mumbling under his breath, Stottlemeyer produced a piece of paper and tape from his pocket. He drew a rudimentary eye on the paper, then taped it over Collins's eyepatch before he could protest. "There, now you've got two eyes, Monk," the captain told his go-to man in weary resignation, "So what if anything do you see?"

Adrian dared to look up. "That's, that's a little better," he admitted, "Mr. Collins, we'd like...OH MY GOD!!!!"

He openly retched as he noticed two soldiers nearby sharing water from the same canteen. He dashed over and smacked it away. "You're both disgraces to this group!" he shouted at them, "Captain, someone, arrest them for degeneracy!"

"You're the crazy guy from TV," one of them recognized him, "I'd be careful around here; there's some flu going around lately."

Adrian leaped high in the air and started waving his hands around wildly. "Adrian, come on, you're not infected," Jack took his son by the arm, "Now you can panic after you've solved this thing."

"Isolation chamber...isolation chamber...decontamination..." Adrian seemed to have once again lost a grip on reality. "You're not really helping our credibility here, you know," Ambrose had to tell him, although he wasn't looking much calmer himself.

"What Mr. Monk was going to ask," Charlie pulled the paper from his coat pocket and held it up for Collins to see, "Does any of this look the least bit familiar to you?"

"No, not at all," Collins shook his head, "We don't use anything like that in this reenactments."

"Phil Seiderbaum wrote this; we're trying to figure it out too," Disher informed him.

"Like I said, I hardly knew Seiderbaum, so whatever it is, you're guess is as good as mine," the reenactor shrugged.

"One last question; you do know that Seiderbaum was playing the man who killed a major Confederate officer during the actual battle?" Stottlemeyer asked him.

"Well, funny you should ask that, because we've heard a couple of strange sounds at night," Collins looked interested to tell what he had to say, "Like gunfire, as if there were ghosts about the campsite. A couple guys I heard say they heard cannons going off too, even a deep Southern voice laughing in the dark, by..."

There came a loud crash. Adrian had gone back to trying to get the crooked tent lined up with the others, and had, perhaps inevitably, knocked it over. It fell into the next tent and knocked that over as well, and so on down the row like a big set of dominoes. Once it finally stopped, Adrian found dozens of eyes glaring right at him. "Um...accidents happen?" he said out loud nervously.

* * *

"Well I think I handled it well," the detective said as they got off the bus at the Eisenhower Farm. 

"Well!?" Sharona gave him a piercing glare, "You're lucky they all didn't ask us to pay for the damages, Adrian, and knowing you I"d probably end up footing the whole cost for you!"

"Well, I see the great Adrian Monk struck again, huh?" Alan raised his hand nearby; he'd called while Adrian had been fending off the unhappy reenactors to tell them he and the children were already at the farm.

"Struck isn't the key word; more like...actually, I don't know what it would be more like," Don admitted. He brought his father up to speed on everything they'd found out. "So basically we're still stuck with the ghost theory," the city planner stated afterwards, "If this were Halloween, it would be the perfect basis for an episode of your series, right Monk?"

"I, uh, guess so," Adrian nodded. He had more important things on his mind, though. Having noticed a gift shop nearby, he knew he had a chance to go look for the presents everyone deserved before the tour began. Once everyone's attention was diverted, he snuck towards the shop and slipped inside. "Good morning sir, can I help you?" the cashier asked him.

"Uh, no, just, just looking," Adrian told her. He scanned the shelves before him. He needed something everyone would be happy with, and he knew from experience that a rock polishing kit, his preferred gift of choice, would not cut it. Unfortunately, everything before him was history-related, and no one was really into history.

He picked up a book about Eisenhower's experiences in Normandy. Given the captain's stated enjoyment of hunting and such, perhaps he would like something related to military matters. No, he shook his head, not emotionally strong enough of a gift. He lined it up perfectly straight with the other books before moving along down the shelf. A farm-related keychain was on display near the back. He picked it up with his tweezers. Julie could never have enough of these. But then again, she was always brand-specific with what she bought, and this probably didn't fit her style. He reluctantly put it back and moved on. Another book was near the door to the storeroom, one about Eisenhower's love of golf. Adrian stared at it, then picked it up. He wasn't sure even after a year what his father liked, but he mentioned a lot enjoying golfing during off time with his fellow truckers a lot during the previous Christmas. Maybe this could be what he could get him...

"Oh there you are Mr. Monk," came Natalie's voice from behind him. Adrian hastily spun around and jerked the book behind his back. "Oh, just, uh, I,..." he said nervously.

"What's that behind your back?" she eyed him suspiciously.

"Um...air," he said quickly, putting it back on the shelf, "Just, just checking the air in here. You, you can never be sure when it can be of low quality and hazardous to your health."

"What is this you're looking at?" she moved around him to see for herself. Fortunately for Adrian, his attention was diverted by something he noticed sticking out from the storeroom door. "What's this?" he asked out loud, trapping it between his cuffs so he wouldn't have to touch it directly and slowly lifting it up. It was an CIA ID tag for a John Turcotte. "Miss," he called to the cashier, who came bustling over, "Does this man work here?"

"No," the cashier frowned at Turcotte's ID, "I've never seen him before. How did that get in here?"

"That's, that's what I'll try and find out," Adrian dropped the ID into Natalie's hands and gestured towards the door. She examined the tag closer. "So I guess this is why the CIA's interested in this case; one of their own's in trouble," she said, taking note of how badly ripped up the top of the card was ripped up.

"So it would appear," Adrian nodded. He extended a hand into the air to get the others' attention. "There you are," Don said as they joined them, "We were wondering where you got to."

"I know why the CIA's here," Adrian gestured for Natalie to hold up the card, "We need to find a man named John Turcotte..."

"Named what!?" Sharona unexpectedly spoke up. The nurse stared right at the card. "But that can't be right!" she exclaimed, her mouth hanging slightly open.

"Do you know something we don't?" Disher asked, puzzled.

"But that's Becky's father," Sharona pointed at Turcotte's name. She shot a sideways glance at her son, who clearly found this a little disturbing to realize as well. "He's a construction worker; he couldn't possible be a spy!"

Adrian took this unexpectedly development in. Something else hit him. If Becky's father was in trouble, could that also mean...?

"Sharona, what's the Turcottes' number?" he asked his former aide.

She was already dialing it. Her face went wide as the loudly audible sound of a phone off a hook could be heard on the other end. "Adrian, what's going on?" she asked him in a very soft voice.

"What's going on, I'm sorry to say," Adrian sounded deflated as he took in Benjy's worried expression, "Is that Becky's life is in serious danger at this very moment."


	7. Death in an Inpenetratable Room

"Right, thanks for the information," Disher said into his cell phone, "Please keep us informed of what you get."

He hung up and turned to the others, who were watching him in anticipation. "Well, you should probably be glad you left early to come here," he told the anxious-looking Flemings, "What's happened has become the talk of Summit. It seems about three nights ago, the neighbors heard some screaming going on the Turcottes. One of them went over to investigate and was knocked cold right after dialing 9-1-1; she's still in intensive care. When the police arrived, they found the place completely trashed; no sign of Becky or her father."

"Any leads on who it might have been?" Jack piped up, looking very worried himself.

"No prints or other identifying evidence at the scene, if that's what you mean," Disher shook his head, "It gets worse, though. Highway patrol pulled over a car driving erratically on Interstate 78. The troopers saw movement in the back seat like someone fighting to get out. She fit Becky's description perfectly. The driver shot the officer who approached the car right in the head and took off before his partner could do anything."

"That's completely terrible," Natalie retched at such a horrible event, "Did he at least get a look at whoever it was?"

"He didn't make it," Disher lowered his head, "His partner didn't get a clear look either."

"So now whoever's behind all this has more blood on his hands," Adrian realized. He couldn't keep from glancing over at Benjy's crestfallen expression at the knowledge his girlfriend could be in danger or perhaps even was dead. "I'm, I'm sure we'll be able to find her in the end, Benjy," he said slowly, being careful not to screw up and say something that would make him feel worse.

"I'm holding you to it, Adrian," Sharona told him even firmer than usual, putting her arm around her son, "This will not just be another promise to..."

"Trouble, here comes Morons Incorporated," Stottlemeyer gestured up the road, where a large van skidded up right in front of the gift shop. "Cordon off the whole area," Agent Breckinridge ordered his subordinatesc as he jumped out, "No one comes near the building. And you," he was glaring right at Adrian and company, "Are coming off this property at once. We ordered you to stay out of this."

"F.B.I.!!!!!" Don all but hurled his badge at them, "You have no power to throw us away!"

"I said get in the van, Agent Eppes, or you'll face criminal charges."

"Gentlemen, please, if I may say," Charlie raised a hand, "There is so much we can do together on this case. Now mathematically, two heads are really better than one; take for instance a hunter who's got a bear cornered in its hole. He knows the odds are even with him getting the bear out, but I'm sure he'd love to increase the odds by asking another hunter to..."

He got his answer to this proposition as he was roughly dragged into the van, as was everyone else--woman and children included. Five minutes later, the C.I.A. agents dumped them in the street near Steinwehr Avenue. "The next one of you clowns who show up anywhere around any site we decided are classified gets shot, understood!?" Breckinridge bellowed at them before the van burned rubber. Stottlemeyer growled at the top of his lungs as he leaped to his feet. "You see," he turned to the Eppeses, "This is why I despise every single branch of the federal government!"

"Hey, we've got nothing to do with these Company jerks!" Don leaped to his feet, breathing fire himself.

"Well then explain to me why every single government fool that gets sent to me pushes everyone around, acts like they're king of the world, like that loser with the big modern equipment who shoves...!!!"

"You mean Thorpe? For your information, Captain, NOBODY likes him!" Don countered, "I had to go through bureau training with that egotist, and I was ready to shoot him too, so don't compare me to him without...!!"

"OK, OK, OK, I think we're all just a little hot under the collar here over having been pushed around by those guys," Alan stepped forward between the captain and his son.

"Yeah, I really appreciate having my civil rights violated by a bunch of psychos!" the captain was not placated.

"I think Mr. Eppes is right," Ambrose stated, dusting off his fur coat, "We all could probably appreciate a little break right now."

"Exactly," Adrian swiped at his own coat. Much as he wanted to get back on the case despite what the C.I.A. had ordered, he wanted to continue what he had started before he'd found John Turcotte's ID, "I, I think I'll go for a walk. On my own."

"HUH!!???" everyone stared at him confusedly. This was practically unheard of.

"I'll, I'll be back in an hour," the detective told them, "Let, let me have a call if you need me." And with that he started walking off before anyone could say anything else. He needed privacy while he went shopping so the presents would be surprises.

* * *

"No, no, that's not the right size," Adrian shook his head at the clerk inside one memorabilia store along the street, "He takes an extra large." 

"Like this?" the clerk held up a Gettysburg T-shirt featuring blue and gray cannons facing each other.

"That's, that's it, but I'd like one that was stitched properly," Adrian told him, "That one was rushed through production; it's slightly off."

The clerk let out a loud sigh; they'd been at it for close to ten minutes now. "How about this one?" he asked, holding up a T-shirt that looked almost exactly the same.

"Collar's too wide," Adrian shook his head again, "That's discolored by three hundredths of a percent," he waved off another one, "The right sleeve's half an inch longer than the left..."

The clerk flung the T-shirts to the floor in disgust. "All right, I give up, we're closed!" he barked, placing a COME BACK LATER sign on the desk and pushing Adrian towards the door.

"But it's only three thirty in the afternoon," the detective pointed out. The clerk paid no heed and locked the door behind him, flipping the CLOSED sign into place. Adrian sighed. That made three stores he'd been ejected from in the last forty minutes.

He walked up the street towards the next store on the block, touching every parking meter he passed. Thus far, his search for gifts had been in vain, for he still had nothing for anyone. And he was starting to run out of places to go to.

The next establishment was Marie's Curios, and featured a sign reading WRAP YOUR OWN GIFTS FOR CHRISTMAS. Adrian nodded at this. It would fit him well. "Can I help...oh it's you," the elderly woman behind the counter, presumably Marie, looked resigned when he came in, "I got a call from Lloyd up the street that the wacky guy from TV was causing trouble in his place."

"Yes, I'm, I'm Adrian Monk," Adrian greeted her, "Just, just looking for something for some people..."

"Tell you what, you don't touch anything, and maybe I'll give you a discount," Marie told him firmly.

"Sounds fair," Adrian walked along the shelf behind the counter, suppressing the urge to rearrange the Gettysburg magnets on one display. He stared at a group of themed pencils inside a coffee mug near the register. While there was hardly any emotional attachment one could get under a pencil under normal circumstances, it was looking like he might have to go that route if nothing else presented itself. His gaze next fell on several snowglobes featuring Victorian-era figures riding one horse open sleighs past Christmas trees decorated the old fashioned way. Perhaps Natalie would like something like this, he reasoned. But then again, since she'd only get to use it one month out of the year, would it be worth whatever he had to pay to get it? Adrian put his hands over his face and stifled a groan. This was a lot harder than it looked.

"So this is why you went for the walk," came Ambrose's voice from behind him. Adrian jumped in shock to hear it, almost knocking several snow globes off the shelf. He scrambled to right them, trying not to notice Marie's disapproving glance at him for this. "Did, did you really have to follow me, Ambrose?" he chided him.

"Hey, I had to get indoors somewhere," Ambrose did look far more relaxed now that he briefly had a roof over his head, "I had a feeling you'd be doing this after what I told you last night."

"I've got to get something for each of them, Ambrose," Adrian said firmly, self-doubt now evident in his every word, "They'll think a lot less of me if I don't."

"You don't know that," Ambrose countered, "If you want my advice, even though I know you rarely think much of it, I think you're trying to overdo it, Adrian."

"What about this?" Adrian wasn't really listening. He picked up a book on the Battle of Gettysburg's 50th and 75th anniversary reunions, "Tell me, do you think Dr. Kroger would be interested in this?"

"See what I mean? He's not even here, and you're pushing yourself over the edge for him," Ambrose pointed out.

"Hey, I have to give him something big; if I don't, Harold will and make me look like a laughingstock," Adrian argued.

It was then that Don came running into the store. "There you are, Monk, we've got a break," he told him, "Our friends from the C.I.A. just pulled up to the Hall of Presidents around the corner."

"And?" Adrian inquired, not really that willing to face Breckinridge again on such short notice.

"And maybe they can tell us something that can help if we listen in," the F.B.I. agent took his hand and pulled him towards the door. Adrian shrugged. "You, you can pay for everything, Ambrose," he told his brother, who from his expression did not bring as much money as he probably should have--a likely scenario given that he rarely had to use any apart from paying taxes in the first place. "Is, is this protocol to follow like this?" he asked Don as they rounded the corner. He could see Breckinridge and the other C.I.A. agents walking into the Hall of Presidents Wax Museum, unaware of their pursuers. Don held the two of them up for a minute outside the door until they were sure the agents would not be looking behind, then waved for Adrian to follow him inside. "Tickets please," the man behind the counter asked strongly when they tried to rush right by him.

"F.B.I., this is official government..."

"Read my lips: TICK-ETS," the man told him firmly. Don glanced at Adrian, who quickly shrugged. With a roll of the eyes, the F.B.I. agent pulled out his wallet and paid the necessary money. The man handed them a pair of tickets and opened the door into the first room. "Take a seat anywhere, I'll start the presentation before I leave for lunch," he told them. The moment the two of them were inside, they ran to the door at the other end. Breckinridge and his associates were standing at the wall behind the wax statue of Lincoln in the next room, punching away at the wall. "Looks like they've got a nifty little headquarters here," Don reasoned, "Now all we have to do is...MONK DON'T!!!"

He was too late, for Adrian had leaped over the railing seperating the presidential figures from the public, having noticed that one of the books on the shelf behind Thomas Jefferson was out of order. The moment his feet touched the platform, an alarm sounded. Don glared at him. "Uh..." Adrian tried to think of something to say. He didn't have time, however, for the door in front of them was sliding open. He hastily jumped behind the statue of John Quincy Adams and tried to match its posture. Don, with nowhere else to go, did the same behind Martin Van Buren as Breckinridge and the other C.I.A agents stormed outside. "What the hell's going on out here!?" the largest one demanded, glancing around.

"I don't see anyone," another stated, "Maybe the system's malfunctioning. I told the boss he needed to put more money into this stuff."

"Ah, never mind, let's just get back to work," Breckinridge waved them back to the next room. Adrian cautiously glanced around to see them finish typing in a code and step forward, disappearing from sight...and immediately the agents let out shrill screams. "NO, PLEASE, DON'T...!!!!" came Breckinridge's cry before several shots rang out. A cold, high, unearthly laugh could also ominously be heard. Adrian leaped off the platform and ran into the next room to see a closed steel door next to Lincoln. "Hello!?" he pounded on it hard. All was abruptly silent inside now. Don glanced at the code key panel of buttons next to the door. "What do you think the code is, Monk!?" he asked breathlessly.

Adrian did a quick scan of the pad for fingerprint marks on the buttons. "Zero, eight, one, nine, seven, nine," he spit it out. He stepped back as Don punched this in and leaped forward into the room once the door slid open yelling "F.B.I.!" He stood stock still in the center of the room, and Adrian could see why; Breckinridge and his associates were already dead, shot repeatedly. The detective glanced around the room. "This is stainless steel construction," he pointed to the walls, "How could the killer have gotten in?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean," Don glanced around, looking confused himself, "This place a is fortress; no way in, no way out, at least not in the time it took us to get in here. Where could the guy have gone? Unless they killed themselves by accident."

"But their guns," Adrian pointed to them, halfway across the room, "They wouldn't have ended up over there if it was a suicide. And what's this here?"

He walked over to the table full of buzzing C.I.A. computers across the room. A file labeled GUNNISON lay on the edge ofthe table. The detective took his tweezers and opened it. Several photographs of the exact spot Crazy Anthony had died were inside. "No, it couldn't be," he shook his head firmly, "This couldn't be about his ghost...the ghost couldn't have killed them...could it?"

"I don't know," Don now looked less sure of his earlier stance against them himself, "But since that girl's father turned out to be one of these guys," he gestured at the corpses behind them, "I guess anything's possible in this case."

"Maybe the answer's somewhere on here," Adrian stared at some of the computers, "I, I should tell you, I'm not really that good with these things, though."

"Charlie is," Don pulled out his cell, "Maybe he can get whatever's on here for us."


	8. Mr Monk Takes a Ghost Tour

"Oh this is lot easier than you might think," Charlie nodded knowingly as he sat down at the terminal some time later, "Given that there is only a finite number of possible usernames and passwords, I can easily set up an override system that can deduce the correct answers using the principles of indefinite probability."

"Or we can plug it into the basic operating theory of Riemann's Hypothesis," Ambrose proposed, leaning over his shoulder, "Find the primes and get them to add up."

"Or better yet, just tell me the whole thing again in English so I can at least have a fraction of a clue what the two of you are going on about," Stottlemeyer looked like he had not understood any of what he'd been told.

"Imagine if you will, captain, that you're standing before a minefield," Charlie right-clicked on the tool bar and started typing in several override codes, "Now depending on your available resources, you could step over it one at a time and hope you luck out, or you could send in sapper units or an airstrike to take the entire field out. By these procedures here," he clicked to activate the process, "we enact the latter. This will run off every possible username and password until the correct one is used. Does that answer your question?"

"No, but I'll take your word for it," Stottlemeyer shook his head.

"It's War Games, sir," Disher told his superior, a detectable level of satisfaction in his voice to know something Stottlemeyer didn't for once, "He's Matthew Broderick. I always wanted to be Matthew Broderick."

"Too bad, you would have been a perfect match if you'd been given the brains to match those utterly devastating good looks of yours," Sharona retorted. She approached Don before Disher could respond to this comeback, and asked with a notable degree of concern, "Anything about where the Turcottes might be, do you think?"

"They'd taken pictures of the room Monk found his ID tag in where they came in here; we found the camera on Breckinridge," Don held up several instantly developed photos, "Monk and I looked them over from top to bottom; neither of us could find anything that'll help."

The screen buzzed and flashed CODE ACCEPTED. "That was fast," Adrian admitted, wiping at a very small (barely even noticeable in fact) smudge on the screen with his sleeve, "'Walla Walla' and 'Washington.' Strange, very strange."

"Too bad, I thought it would have been, 'egotistical' and 'madmen,'" Stottlemeyer snorted.

"Regardless, we're in," Charlie nodded as the main C.I.A. menu popped up, "What should we check out first?"

"Oh, check, check to see how John Turcotte's connected with this," Adrian requested. Charlie typed in several commands. "Well, it looks like Mr. Turcotte is C.I.A. district supervisor for the Bos-Wash Megalopolis," he remarked, seeing Turcotte's face appear on the screen (with the rather ominous red letters underneath reading MISSING SINCE 12/19), "He would be interested in whatever's going on here."

"Hang on, while you're here in personnel, see if any of the victims worked under him," his brother proposed.

"Gotcha," the mathematician clicked on the main listing of agents. "Bill Burroughs," he pointed at the dead man's image as it popped up, "Apparently he was number four in the department and had several commendations for merit in the line of duty."

"I get it," Adrian nodded, seeing some of the puzzle fall into place, "He was looking for the killer before he was killed; that's why he was looking around the encampment for whatever he was looking around for."

"Wait, no Phil Seiderbaum?" Natalie scanned the list, but Seiderbaum's name was visibly not on it.

"Yeah, that is strange," Don mused, "So if he's not a Company man, what's his involvement with this?"

"I'm guessing he saw something he didn't, and they had to take him and Ted Norman out too," Adrian reasoned, rubbing at the screen again, "Which leaves us once again with the whole ghost business," he shook his head at the absurdity of what they were seemingly up against.

"And you're absolutely sure no one could get into this room at all, Monk?" Stottlemeyer asked him.

"This place is completely airtight; I checked four times," the detective informed him, "No side doors, no air vents, no ceiling panels, nothing. This room was hermetically sealed when the agents opened the door.

"How about the security cameras?" Disher inquired, "They pick up anything?"

"The cameras were malfunctioning," Don pointed out, "Now maybe someone tampered with them beforehand, we don't really know, and we won't really know until we can order a maintenance check on them. And plus we've got no clues as to how their guns went off on them, since there's no other murder weapons available to shoot them. Which leaves only one avenue left..."

"Check the spot where Crazy Anthony Gunnison died," Adrian gestured at the pictures in the folder, "And maybe his tombstone in the National Cemetery."

"Don't worry about it, I know just how we'll do it," Jack spoke up, "I myself went on it when I first came here. And it'll be entertaining as well."

* * *

"I don't get their logic with this at all," Adrian was complaining that evening, "If this is the biggest ghost tour company in this town, they should know to make all their candles even." 

"Well you know, Mr. Monk, there's just no way you CAN make fifty candles all even," Natalie told him, leaning the one she was holding sideways to ignite it from the person next to them at the corner of Steinwehr and the Taneytown Road. A good crowd of somewhat over fifty people had apparently signed up for the evening's Gettysburg Ghost Walk (Jack had been told by the receptionist that he'd just nailed down the last tickets for the night in time). Adrian was not only concerned about making the candles look and burn alike, but of course about the clear fire hazard that fifty people holding candles posed, particularly if someone slipped anddropped their candle. In addition, he had to check to make sure the rest of his necessary and emergency paraphernalia were in working order. "Flashlights work, Mr. Eppes?" he called to Alan, was standing with the children by several huge sacks and briefcases all marked MONK--DO NOT TOUCH UNLESS IT IS YOUR NAME.

"Clear as the day they were screwed in, "Alan flicked on the one he was holding to demonstrate its working order.

"Backup flashlights?" Adrian continued pressing.

"Got 'em."

"Backup batteries for the backup flashlights?"

"They're all right here, they all work, now don't be hyper about it Monk, you'll get through this fine."

"Backup batteries for the backup batteries to the backup flashlights?" Adrian continued, but was cut off by a shrill police siren wailing inside a bag. He brushed past several astonished onlookers and shut it off. "I told you to leave...!" he began, but changed his mind in midstream and asked Julie, standing nearest the bag, "You, you were just testing them for me, right?"

"Right, oh absolutely," she said quickly, clearly having not meant a word of it, "All good to go in case we have to flush him out in a dark woods."

"Or let everyone around know I'm having a seizure too," Adrian added, patting her on the shoulder before returning it to the bag.

"You know, Mr. Monk, I really don't get why we need all this stuff here," Benjy was straining to dump the contents of a broken bag into a whole one larger one, "The huge number of flashlights, the emergency food stash, the flares, that I can understand, the whistles sort of too, but enough fireworks for three whole Fourth of July displays, and glowing Disco balls?" he held up the sparkling latter in question.

"In case we get marooned," Adrian informed him.

"Now you do realize we'll only be no more than a mile outside town at most, not deep in the heart of the Congo," Alan reminded the detective.

"One can never be too prepared for these kind of excursions," Adrian checked through the bags to make sure he had absolutely everything he felt he needed, "Don't want to be in the dark. I don't understand why we had till wait till after dark to do this. It's not as if we couldn't..."

"Come on guys, they're ready for the tour," Jack's voice echoed behind them. Adrian nodded in approval and reluctantly fell into the crowd gathering around the squat red-haired woman in a green parka waving the mass of people closer. "Good evening," she greeted them all, "My name's Trudy, and I welcome you..."

Adrian burst into tears. "Are you all right, sir?" she asked him with raised eyebrows.

"My wife was Trudy; she was murdered, my life was destroyed..." the detective buried his head on Natalie's shoulder and sobbed in a manner that would be universally defned as out of control. Looking uncomfortable, she pushed him back up. "It's not the end of the world because they share the name, you know," she reminded him.

"Tonight," Trudy the guide went on, "We will be stopping by several of Gettysburg's most haunted places, where numerous ghostly activity has been recorded over the years. Maybe if we're fortunate, we might even see a ghost or two ourselves. Now our first stop on the tour is a house where several severely wounded Union troops were treated after the battle, so if you'll follow me, we'll try and touch the next world."

The crowd started following her back down the street. Adrian once again touched every parking meter along the way. His gaze fell into the front window of a vintage museum to the Colt .45. The captain, he figured, might be interested in a decorative gun for display, or perhaps a new hunting rifle if the gift shop had them. And at least he wasn't barred from going inside it--yet.

"Watch, watch your candle," he told Charlie next to him, "It's dripping too much on the other side."

"Mrs. Teeger's right, Mr. Monk, candle wax is something you just can't fix," Charlie told him calmly, "The variables involved would..."

"Hang, hang on," the detective held up his hand, glancing through the window of the house they were passing, "The Christmas tree's completely off; they hung the balls on it completely wrong. There's no color coordination on them whatsoever. I've got to warn them before they hurt someone with it. These balls can be dangerous like that."

He bounded up the steps and knocked on the door. "What!!??" demanded the large, unshaven man that opened it.

"Um, I'm, I'm Adrian Monk, you may know me, sorry to bother you," the detective told him, "I, I wanted to ask, can, would it be all right if I rearranged your balls a bit?"

Infuriated, the man decked him and slammed the door shut in his face. Adrian clutched his jaw. "Was it something I said?" he asked naively.

"Come on, Adrian, right now," a similarly ticked off Sharona hauled him back to the sidewalk by the collar. "You really need to control him a lot more than you do," she complained to Natalie.

"I can't control everything he does!" her successor protested, "I can't very well put a leash on him."

"There's your problem right there; you don't think of everything...you do it and I'll take your head right off your shoulders, Adrian," she warned him as he reached for the lights taped to the outside of the next house.

"It, it was just a thought," Adrian said quickly, turning back to the street. He hoped everyone else on the block had decorated properly so he wouldn't be tempted. Unfortunately, the house on the end had a large inflatable snowman in the yard whose middle section was smaller than the top and bottom ones. And the fence was missing a bolt near the gate. He took a deep breath and glanced up at the sky, trying to ignore everything.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something bright in the attic of the house directly across the street. It looked very much like a person holding something that looked like a rifle. He stared closer at it, but now whatever it was had disappeared--if it had ever been there at all. He frowned. Part of his mind was wondering how they would react if they did in fact have to come face to face with Crazy Anthony's ghost, or even some other ghost. There certainly had been nothing in the San Francisco police's training program that had prepared cadets for experiences with the supernatural. Proving Crazy Anthony guilty in a court of law would be equally problematic if it came to that. He hoped there was a more rational explanation for the murders.

The beginning part of the tour, however, was relatively uneventful. The detective took in everything the guide explained at each of the first three stops in Gettysburg itself about how often ghosts had been sighted in basements and back rooms over the years. No signs of supernatural activity were present at the moment, however, so perhaps these tales had simply been the imagination of the people that had once lived there. He had hoped to fix the town Christmas tree in the traffic circle, but comon sense told him that after the balls incident, it would not be advisable at the moment. He also checked the windows of several other stores in the downtown area that he had not been able to get to earlier. One, a tech store, had on display several new and advanced cpmouter screenwriting programs that he felt Benjy might like. He noted its address and vowed to return somehow.

Before long, they had all circled back down the block and continued towards the National Cemetery. Slowly the lights started dimming overhead as Gettysburg receded behind them, prompting Adrian to fetch a pair of night-vision goggles and a miner's helmet from his bag (several unknown group members snickered out loud when he put the latter on and turned on the light; he tried to ignore it). By the time they reached the cemetery's gates, only the lights of the group's candles illuminated the dark December night. "Be careful in here, try and stay on the path," Trudy the guide told everyone, unlocking the heavy iron gate, "There's lots of things you can trip over in the dark."

"Excuse us, where's the section the people from Mississippi are buried?" Stottlemeyer raised his hand.

"It's over by the New York Memorial there," she pointed towards it, "Now some people say that on clear nights, they've heard..."

She was too caught up in her spiel to notice Adrian and company moving along the path towards the Mississippi section. Adrian kicked at another uneven snowbank. "I thought the caretaker's supposed to handle these things," he muttered out loud.

He stopped at the nearest grave in the unknown section, number 303. "He was murdered," he announced out loud, "His name was Will Spooner from Broome County, New York. He was having an affair with his commander's wife, so the colonel shot him in the back and planted the body on the battlefield to make it look like he died in combat."

"Unbelieveable," Natalie's jaw was open at this deduction, "How did you see that with nothing to go on!?"

"You think that's impressive?" Ambrose leaned forward and half stumbled through the snow (much to Adrian's discomfort) to the grave next to it, "He's Elisha Vosburgh from Lansing. He was fifteen and told them he was twenty to get in. He first served at Savage's Station, at which he fired a total of three rounds, considered deserting after Chancellorsville, but decided to stay in so that his entrothed would not feel he was a coward. He was hit in the neck while retreating on Oak Ridge on the first day, but it was another month before they found the body. Now can we hurried this up so I can get back inside?"

"I think you're doing good, very good," Natalie patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. Ambrose smiled warmly. "Is there another helmet in there, though?" he gestured to Alan with the bag, "I, I think I could use some light of my own."

He did in fact look ill at ease being outside after dark with nothing to fall back on similar to his usual environment. The city planner dug another mining helmet out, flicked it on, and tossed it to Ambrose. "Much better," the instruction manual writer breathed in relief, "Although if we have any more lights turned on in here, an airplane's probably going to mistake this for an airport and land on top of us."

He let out a small, uninspired chuckle, then shifted about embarrassed when no one else laughed. "Found it," came Disher's call from the Mississippi section. Adrian hustled over (once again taking care to only step in already-made footprints) and stared at the tombstone midway through the fourth row label ANTHONY J. GUNNISON, COLONEL, 217TH MISSISSIPPI, BORN AUGUST 11, 1831, DIED JULY 2, 1863. "So, I guess we stand here and wait for something to happen?" the lieutenant proposed.

"I've got a better idea, Randy, why don't you knock on the tombstone, then go down and interrogate him?" Stottlemeyer rolled his eyes, "What do you think, Monk?"

"Well, there hasn't been any regular activity here," Adrian turned to face him, promtping the captain to shield his eyes against the light from the detective's headlamp, "The dirt has been settled for at least five months, and the snow hasn't been..."

He noticed something from behind them. "There's a light on in the gatehouse tower," he pointed, "Looks like a candle light, too weak to be part of the regular lighting system."

"I see what you mean," Don squinted at it, "All right, you and me'll go check it out, Monk. Captain, you go see if you can find out what that cannon shot was about. Dad, Charlie, stay here, yell if you see anything. And turn off those lights, Monk; if someone's in there, we can't blow any surprise we might have."

"I've, I've got a better idea, why don't we just call in some floodlights and turn them on around the gatehouse, and then move in?" Adrian proposed. Don ignored this and started moving towards the gatehouse Adrian sighed, but shut down his headlamp and blew out the candle anyway. "I hate bad guys who use darkness against us," he complained to both assistants as they almost instinctively fell in behind him, as if anticipating that he would be unable to do this on his own.

"Shhhh!" Sharona hissed at him as they approached the gatehouse door. Don raised a hand, then kicked it in. The four of them inched up the stairs towards the top. The F.B.I. agent cautiously slunk forward into the room. "Clear," he whispered softly.

"There's something in those boxes in the corner," Adrian's night vision goggles were at least still of use to him. The detective stooped down next to them. "Oh my," he breathed, "Assault rifles, rocket launchers, B.A.R.s. This can't be normal. It has..."

He saw it out of the corner of his eye; the glint of a machine gun poking in throug the door. "DOWN!!" he roared, leaping behind another crate before the shots rang out. "Don't shoot!" he yelled frantically at the shooter, whom he could see through his artificially enhanced vision had strong Middle Eastern features, "I'm, I'm a TV star, sort of! Killing me'll bring down the country's whole wrath on your head!"

"So you're the big man Monk they show on the accursed Yankee television," the shooter sneered, jerking the gun around in the dark trying to find his targets, "I hate your show. You're the perfect example of how Yankees kill people's brain cells with their TV! Come out so I can shoot you good in the heart where you deserve it!"

"I, I don't have a heart. I lost it when my wife died," Adrian looked around for an escape. He noticed Natalie sneaking up behind the shooter with a large crate. "Uh, look, you, you forgot your zipper," he called out. The shooter dumbly looked down seconds before she whacked it over his head, sending him crumpling to the floor. The light switch blazed on, blinding the detective until he could take the goggles off. "Nice, nice going," he commended Natalie.

"Oh, so finally for once you appreciate something I do," she said coolly, rolling the out-cold shooter over on his back.

"I've told you I do appreciate it, Natalie."

"All right, all right, don't make me have to seperate you two," Don raised his hand. He examined the suspect over, then glanced at the huge illegal weapons stash in the corner. "So that's what this is about," he mused, "Help me get him up."

* * *

"So that was your big heroic moment, Monk? Begging him not to kill you because he'd disappoint millions of viewers?" Stottlemeyer was straining not to laugh back at the sheriff's office a half hour later. 

"I, I would have had him in a few minutes," Adrian said quickly, fiddling with the Santa hat Gergory had put on the lamp on his desk, "I could see him; I would have gotten him if Natalie hadn't."

"Sure you would have, Adrian," Sharona rolled her eyes, "You were REALLY in control back there."

The door to the cells opened and Gregory emerged. "OK, the guy exercised the right to remain silent," he told everyone, "But I did get his name from Interpol: Abdul Hassan al-Waziri.

"I heard of him," Don nodded, "He's real big in the Taliban; he was one of the top aides to Mullah Dadullah before he was killed. Participated in several gruesome P.O.W. executions, I've heard. Intelligence we got recently hinted he might have been in the country, and at least now we know why."

"I also called around," Gregory went on, "The armory up in Carlisle was robbed a few months back. Al-Waziri must have been planning to send the weapons back to his comrades in arms. So you guys deserve some strong commendations; you've broken up a pretty big smuggling operation."

"What about the murders?" Adrian looked somewhat skeptical, "I didn't see him at the reenactment, and there's the matter of how that shot was made."

"Don't worry Monk, I'll work it out of him in time," Gregory reassured him, "Al-Waziri's got some very stiff penalties coming his way once the courts get through with him for this. You did good, Monk, you really did."

"Great, I'd say this calls for a celebration," Stottlemeyer clapped Adrian on the back, "You up for a pizza, Monk?" Noticing the detective unconvinced expression, he said, "We've got the guy, Monk; he's dead to rights. It's only a matter of time before he cracks under pressure."

"I don't know," Adrian shook his head, "There's just something here that doesn't add up, as if there's something we didn't take into account with everything."


	9. A Mother's Worst Nightmare

AUTHOR'S NOTE: We're about halfway there, give or take a few chapters. Have you figured it out yet? I hope it has proved enjoyable for you, even though crossovers often do present problematic blending problems. At any rate, better buckle up, because our heroes are about to find out exactly what evil lurks in the hearts of men...

* * *

"Horseback riding?" Adrian asked hesitantly the next morning as they approached a low building behind which stables could be seen, "I, I'm not sure this is really the best way to do this." 

"Would you rather have a unique experience touring the battlefield, or listen to some monotone guy ramble on an on while you pass by all the good stuff, Adrian?" his father proposed, "I did this the first time I was here, and really I prefer it to the buses."

"I, I did tell you I'm not that good with animals?" the detective added, "Horses, they're, they're sort of reckless, hard to keep nice and even. Plus they tend to...you know..."

He shuddered at the very thought. "It's not so bad, Monk," Charlie reassured him, "I've ridden them a few times."

"I'll, I'll believe that when I see it," Adrian said sketpically. They entered the building, where a large man was settling some saddles up on the wall. "Hello there," he greeted them warmly, "How can I help you?"

"You can confess that you robbed the jewelry store in town this morning," Adrian spoke up. Everyone stared at him. "There's a very noticeable bulge under your wig," he pointed out, "Sapphires and amythyst. Eighteen carats apiece."

The man gulped and made an abrupt break for the door. Disher stuck out his foot and tripped the man, who flew hard into a metal barrel and slumped, out cold, to the floor. The lieutenant pulled off the man's wig to reveal the jewels in question. "You just find these guys everywhere, don't you Monk?' he told the detective while dialing his cell phone for the police.

"It's, it's a blessing, and a curse," Adrian scanned the map of the horse tour, "Good, it, it goes by the field the men died on."

"Adrian, it's over, you solved the case," Sharona told him wearily, "We got him."

"But we didn't prove how he shot them, if it was him," her former employer protested, "I just have a feeling there's more to this than just a Taliban arms smuggling plot. I need to see more before we can call it solved."

"All right, I think we can go out there for a little while," Don conceded, "Didn't get a chance to before, anyway; maybe we can pick something up."

"Go right ahead, but I think you guys are looking into it too much," Stottlemeyer picked several saddles off the wall and started handing them around to everyone, "As far as I'm concerned, this case is closed; we've got nothing else to worry about."

* * *

Had he glanced backwards out the window, however, he might have noticed a shadowy figure staring into the building through a pair of binoculars from atop a small hill. It watched them go outside and saddle up several horses and start off on the tour, splitting off into different groups,. It slipped back out of sight behind a tree, where it slowly began loading bullets into a rifle.

* * *

"Whoa, easy, slow down!" Adrian pleaded desperately with his mount. The horse, a gelding unluckily named Virus, weaved from side to side along the path, apparently well aware of his unease with riding him. The detective tugged hard on the reins, which he was clutching hard enough to crumble into dust. "Center of the trail, CENTER!" he pleaded with Virus, who came to an abrupt stop, almost as if offended. "Thank, thank you," Adrian nodded at his horse, who did not return the happy look. He slowly slid down into the snow next to Don. "Well, this is it," the latter pointed out, "This is the spot they died at. What should we be looking for, Monk?" 

"Not looking for; found," Adrian minefield-walked to what he knew was the exact spot Bill Burroughs had fallen, reached down, and picked up with his tweezers from under the snow a spent shell casing. "Oh yeah," Don nodded, glancing over the detective's shoulder, "Crazy Anthony Gunnison sure wouldn't have had any access to these back in 1863. So we can say for sure it wasn't a ghost now."

"And look at the sod along here," Adrian kicked the snow away to reveal the ground underneath; it's packed tighter than usual. Someone dug a hole here and buried themself. They extended the rifle up, and shot the men when they walked by. No one ever looks down at one of these events; they were in the clear."

"Real nice work, Monk," Don commended him, "Now we've got proof on al-Waziri that'll nail..."

"No, we don't," Adrian shook his head, "He didn't fire this trigger. The gun he aimed at us in the gatehouse doesn't match the one fired here. It's shells would have been much bigger. And there weren't any of those among the weapons he'd stolen either."

"So you're saying he's completely in the clear?" the F.B.I. agent was now totally confused.

"Oh, al-Waziri's in on it, yes, but he wasn't alone," Adrian double bagged the shell casing, "We need to find out who his contacts were he was working with; one of them might have killed Burroughs and company. I hope we can finish it quick so I can go shopping again..."

"Shopping?" Don raised a hand, "You don't really strike me as a shopping type, Monk, so what's going on there?"

"Oh, it's a long story, but might as well tell it," Adrian said in resignation, kicking the snow back into place, "I need presents for everyone, A.A.R.P. They're all," his expression fell again, "They're all like family to me. You can't not have anything for your almost family at Christmas."

He sighed again. That's one of the reasons I was never big on Christmas until I met my wife," he confessed to Don, "Too much wanting in general by everyone. Even when it was just my mother and brother to provide for, it was a nightmare, one I'd rather not go into more detail on."

"Well, as I'm sure you've heard, Monk, Christmas is a lot more than the wanting," Don put a sympathetic shoulder around him, much to his discomfort. "The people Charlie and I work with, we've become a family too--a little dysfunctional lately, but the warmth is still there. Just being around the people you care for during the holidays, I think that's a gift in its own right. You just enjoy things with your bunch, they won't ask for anything from you."

"You're absolutely sure, Agent Eppes?"

"Trust me," Don nodded, "Now that we've got some more proof, let's go see if we can catch up with somebody else. I'd really like to see the view on Little Round Top."

"Not, not on Big," Adrian cautioned, "Little's just the way I like it."

Something else occurred to him. "Ac, Actually, I can think of something you might be able to do for me, if you have any jurisdiction," he said. He proceeded to relate the sad tale of Mitch's demise in Kosovo. "We've got nothing on it," he finished, "I myself tried to call his superior officers once Natalie told me the whole story; none of them answered me. I think it would be better for everyone if we just knew for sure what happened there."

"Well, tell you what, Monk; I'll give some of the people I know a call," Don proposed, "I can't make any guarantees something'll come up from it, but if it does, you'll be the first to know."

"Thank, thank you," without thinking, Adrian shook his hand. He realized his mistake almost immediately and gestured around for a wipe, before realizing there was no one around to give him one. He wiped his hand wildly on his coat. Of all the times to not bring spares...

He tried to mount Virus, but the horse lurched forward at the last minute, toppling the detective into a ditch. "I should have taken the bus after all," he moaned, desperately trying to wring himself dry, which he already knew was not going to work.

* * *

"So this is it, the High Water Mark of the Confederacy," Natalie proclaimed as she gently rode her much more professional horse up to the copse of trees General Pickett had aimed for on that fateful day, "It's hard to believe that in a peaceful place like this there was carnage and violence that decided the course of a whole nation." 

"Adrian probably could have put up with a divided country," Sharona joined her at the copse, "As long as the line was perfectly straight and went right down the middle of the map."

The two of them chuckled loudly. The time when they'd harbored suspicions and even jealosies of each other was now long past. They had grown as intimate as one could imagine. "So, how's the college watch coming?" Natalie asked once they'd recollected themselves.

"We've narrowed it to either Montclair State or DeSales in Pennsylvania," Sharona told her, "I made clear I want him somewhere that's not too far away from Summit. Now the latter has a better program, but Becky was applying to Montclair, so...

She stopped as the realization of Becky's unknown fate set in for the two of them. "I hope she's not already dead," the nurse spoke for both of them, "She really is a wonderful young woman, someone I wouldn't mind seeing Benjy marry some time down the road."

"When did they first meet?" Natalie was interested.

"About three months ago. She was new in town, and they were put together for a science project. It probably then went to the usual 'I think you're beautiful'/'I think you're handsome' routines, because when they came home that night they were already in love. Which would have been fine except they ended up failing the science project; I was pretty upset for a while after that. But anyway, she wants to major in artestry for perfoming arts, so they've got the dream of running their own production company already: he writes the films, she draws up the costumes and scenery. Just the other day they printed up their first card. Care to take a look?"

Natalie nodded eagerly. The one thing that caught her attention was the name Benjy and his girlfriend had chosen: SHARTREV PRODUCTIONS. "So, this is his way of telling himself the two of you will always be together in his mind, I guess," she remarked.

"As far as he's seeing it, it wasn't his father that threw him off the Golden Gate the other Christmas," Sharona wasn't looking at her. Her voice was somber and regretful, "It had to have been someone else posing as Trevor, he thinks. And in some strange sense, he's right. The real Trevor Fleming, the one that did love me, died a long time ago. Did you see the episode with the mail bomber earlier?"

"Yes, we were all over Mr. Monk's brother's that night," Natalie nodded, "It's about his uncle in Detroit, right? Mr. Monk actually leaped in the air and cheered when you found him out on that one. He screamed, 'Hit the road baby!' and danced pretty badly. Afterwards, though, he was inside the bathroom, looking a little sorry he'd done it."

Benjy couldn't finish writing that one," Sharona told her, her face crunched up at the thought of Adrian's antics, "It was too painful for him. I had to write that part myself while he was sleeping. After it aired, I got a few pieces of mail from some of the people Trevor knew at one point or another calling me a liar, that he would never have done that. But it wouldn't be right if I didn't write it as it actually happened, that would make me no better than he was at his worst."

She sighed deeply and stared across the white fields before them. "I wish it all could have been different," she mumbled softly, "I'd give anything for having a good decent Trevor back just for one day so Benjy can sleep at night knowing he died in the light."

"Keep it in mind when you go to bed tonight," Natalie proposed, "It is Christmas, and God listens extra louder to prayers now."

Sharona stared at her incredulously. "Sometimes I think you're too positive for you're own good," she snorted, "You'll end like I was at age five, begging my father for a Princess Leia doll."

"And?" Natalie raised a confused eyebrow.

"And I ran down early thinking it was all mine, and found him dead drunk under the tree with no presents at all. It was then and there that I came to realize that men are completely useless."

"Hey you're not the only one to go through it," Natalie pointed out for her, "Just because I had money didn't mean I wasn't disappointed. I wanted a home player Dungeons and Dragons game when I was eight. When I came downstairs, I saw Jonathan had smashed it in a rage because he hadn't gotten the fishing boat he'd wanted. But we can't get down on all of it," she looked up into the sun, "You're supposed to see the brighter things at Christmas that we do have--in our cases, two wonderful children, who we'll have to give up in a few years so they can go to college." Her own expression went south. "And it's not going to be easy to let go, I'll tell you now. Julie was the only thing that kept me from committing suicide after Mitch died. Knowing I'm going to have to live without her three years from now...it does grind on a parent's mind. You don't know how to say goodbye, and you're left wondering if you've done good enough for them."

"Oh it's hard all right," Sharona agreed, "I have those same nightmares of being alone every other night myself. But you have to let them go, whether you like it or not; you can't hold them in forever. You have to trust they'll make the right decisions, and in our cases I think we can."

For a moment they simple stood staring ahead. "Shall we head on?" Natalie broke the silence.

"Guess so," Sharona hefted the map, "Pennsylvania Memorial this way. That works out; one of my great-great grandfathers served in a New Jersey regiment. We'll have to find his name on the monument."

* * *

"So this is Devil's Den?" Julie glanced at the large rock outcroppings to their right. 

"Apparently is," Charlie consulted his own map, "I suggest we pause for a moment, given that my stallion is in dire need of a drink after that so-called treacherous trek through the Peach Orchard."

They came to a stop by a small stream, which the mathmatician's horse began slowly drinking out of. "So, I'm curious, when you were young, did you ever try and wonder how Santa got around the world in one night?" she asked him, interested, "I mean, I've heard several theories over the years, but would it be mathamatically possible?"

"Just about everything is mathamatically possible," Charlie said, "First you would start off by taking the sum of the entire world population, then subtract those who wouldn't celebrate Christmas, since presumably Saint Nicholas would not visit them. Then you would set a fixed start point--in this case, the North Pole--and add in variables such as the circumference of the planet, wind speed at the altitudes he would fly at, the speed that eight reindeer would go at, the drag enacted by a sleigh loaded with toys, and the natural shift of the time zones over the globe. Given a speed of a mile every second, it might be remotely possible to do it."

"You know, I've never really been into math, but it sounds like you do live an interesting life," she told him, "If it's not too violent that Mom'll ban it, I think I just might watch your show when it comes out. When'll you be finished the outlines?"

She turned to Benjy, who was staring blankly at the sky. "You're still worried about her, aren't you?" she asked him; she'd noticed he'd been up at two the previous evening looking out the window, "She's going to be all right; Mr. Monk'll find out where she is."

"I hope," was Benjy's distant reply, "I need her. Becky's one of the best things that ever happened to me. Professor," he glanced at Charlie, "Do you understand relationships? How do they equate?"

"I'm not sure I know what you're asking," Charlie told him, "There are some areas I don't have expertise in, and interpersonal relationships is one of them."

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Well, there was this other mathmatician," Charlie grew thoughtful himself, "We'd worked together before. I guess I still have feelings. She had to go back to England, though, so right now we really don't have anything. It does, however, feel good to love someone, I can tell you that, if that's what you mean. You feel like every molecule in your body has exponentially increased to a higher level of operation. That probably doesn't make much sense, does it?"

"Don't worry, when you're our age, none of it seems to make sense," Julie admitted, "I still can't understand how it works, and Mr. Monk isn't much help. But I did learn from him that when it's right, you'll know...or at least I think that's what he meant, he clearly didn't have a clue how to say it."

"I just hope it's right with Becky and me," Benjy told her, "If I have kids, I don't want them to have to go through what I have. No one should."

"I think you'll be all right," she reassured him, "Mom always says there's always hope." Her gaze then fell on a nearby regimental marker. "What's this one supposed to mean?"

* * *

"Florida Memorial," Alan read off the plain stone monument they were riding by, "Rather dull compared to the ones we just passed if you asked me. Hard to believe Florida was even involved in something like this." 

"You know who served in Florida's Second Infantry?" Ambrose told him with a large tinge of eagerness to share his knowledge, "Lewis Powell, soon to become infamous as a member of John Wilkes Booth's assassination team; he was wounded on the second day of battle. He went on to try and assassinate William Seward while Booth shot Lincoln, and was hanged for it. The conspirators that didn't get hanged--Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlen, Edmund Spangler, and Dr. Samuel Mudd-- were sent to a federal penitentary in Florida, in fact--Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas to be exact, where they served three years before being pardoned--well, except for O'Laughlen; yellow fever took him before he could get out."

"I should ask Charlie whether CalSci has any openings in the history department; you would be a perfect fit," the city planner commended him.

"Uh, no," Ambrose shook his head firmly, "I'm quite good typing up instruction manuals, thank you. And I really should get inside. Steady boy, easy there."

He clenched his knees tightly against the horse's side to stay on board. "Well it looks like you've got two exceptional kids there," Alan fixed Jack with a quizzical expression, "How anyone could want to not grow up with them is beyond me."

"Not you too," Jack sighed, "The thing is, you have to understand me as a person. I've always been a free spirit, for better or worse. Life growing up in New Hope was monotonous; everyone did the same thing year in and year out. I didn't want that. I wanted to do more. I remember standing on the banks of the Delaware, staring at the other side and thinking the whole world was out there, if I could only go find it. That led me out west, in search of adventure. Living with his mother proved to be not quite what I had in mind, so I went back east, and the open road has been my home ever since then. Lately, though, I've started realizing the consequences of that kind of life," he glanced regretfully at his son, who was busy fixing his stirrups, "Maybe things would have turned out better for everyone if I'd thought a little differently."

"I always forgave you, Dad," Ambrose gave him a big smile, "It was Adrian who was the hardcase about it. I always told him you'd be coming back, but no, he didn't believe a word of it."

"And I'm glad you could, Ambrose, really I am," his father rubbed his shoulder, "That puts you a rung above Jack Jr., who doesn't forgive anyone for anything."

"Still, you're probably quite lucky he does forgive you," Alan pointed out, "A lot of people I know wouldn't. I've found that being married and having children is one of the most rewarding experiences anyone can have. Even if they're a little unique as Charlie turned out to be, you shouldn't run away from it. I've always believed in responsibility."

"Hey, I wanted a son I could be proud of," Jack defended his point of view, "Sometimes you're so busy finding the forest you don't see the trees. At least I'm getting a second chance; believe me, I am grateful for that." His expression crashed again. "At the same time, though, I do realize now it won't make up for forty years of lost memories, so Mrs. Fleming does have a point, painful as it is to admit. I'll never be able to fully redeem myself. But I would really like to try. Oh do I want to try."

"You're doing good, Dad, really you are," Ambrose told him, "I'd follow you to the moon. I'd stand around in a blizzard for you."

The two of them exchanged a warm glance. The cell phone in Ambrose's pocket started buzzing. "Oh, well, looks like my admirers need more advice," he said, pulling it out. "I'm here," he said into it.

"We're looking at a monument to the Kanawha Division, I think," Julie's voice came through on the other end, "What was that?"

"Simple. Kanawha was an early proposed name for West Virginia after the people in the western mountains of what was then Virginia decided not to follow their tidewater associates into the Confederacy," Ambrose explained, As there was some argument over whether this would cause confusion with Kanawha County in that area, they debated other names and eventually decided on the simpler West Virginia, which the state was admitted to the Union as just before this battle took place. Now they were mostly spared the battles the eatern part of Virginia had to endure, and Union control over the area was firm, but it did provide the first experience in the war for Robert E. Lee..."

* * *

"Look sir, one hand," Disher galloped past his superior. "You're going to crash, Randy," the captain said without looking up from the statue he was looking at. 

"I'm not going..." Disher said seconds before he smacked into a low-hanging tree branch and was flung to the ground. "That's pretty good, sir," he said, rubbing his skull, "Is that Abner Doubleday?"

He hustled over to the statue. "Sure is," Stottlemeyer pointed to the inscription, "Says he commanded the Third Division. So he wouldn't have had to worry in a pickle; if they ran out of ammo, he could just have had them pitch the cannonballs at the graycoats. The world's first hanging curveballs."

He dug through his pocket. "Tell me if you think Jared will like this?" he asked his adjutant, holding up a battlefield cap. "Of course," Disher nodded.

"Seriously, or are you just sucking up?" Stottlemeyer raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, seriously," the lieutenant said. "You know what I always wanted as a kid, Captain? An alien laser gun. That doesn't sound too ridiculous, does it?"

"Oh no, not at all," Stottlemeyer mumbled, "It fits right in with what I'd thought you'd be like as a kid."

"I would be the coolest kid on the block with one," Disher went on, "Of course, then I realized that Santa's inventory didn't likely extend to outer space material. So I went with a bike instead. Of course I can still dream."

"Oh yes you certainly can," the captain mumbled, "As for me, I was hoping for a tank. A toy, to be sure, but one with operating functions. There was a big, nasty dog next door that I really wanted to blast good; he kept barking all night long for weeks on end. Of course, though, I gave it up when I realized there was no Santa at age seven."

"Oh come on, don't tell me you gave up that young," Disher protested, "There's always room for Santa at seven to..."

"That was the year my mother walked out with the postman," Stottlemeyer told him with bitterness in his voice, "And I told myself if there was a Santa, he wouldn't have let it happen. If there was a Santa, why was there so much sadness in the world; why is there still so much sadness?"

He hung his head at the very sadness he'd gone through of the years. "Speaking of which, I got this the other day before we left," he held up a Christmas card. Disher read the inscription inside: A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, LELAND, PLEASE FORGIVE ME IN THIS SEASON OF REDEMPTION. L.F. "Well, it's a very nice card regardless of the fact it was shipped from San Quentin," he said before realizing this was not a helpful way to put it.

"I was hoping to put it all behind me," Stottlemeyer shook his head, 'Now maybe this is legit, maybe it isn't, I don't know, and right now I really don't care.

"Well, look at it this way, sir; she will be eligible for parole in fifty years after taking the guilty plea," Disher said helpfully, "And people are living a lot longer these days. Maybe by then you'll..."

"Shhhhh!" Stottlemeyer held up his hand. He looked suspiciously into the woods around them. "I thought I just heard something. It sounded a lot like a..."

* * *

"Don't, don't, you're too close to the edge!" Adrian pleaded with Don, who was riding his horse close to the rocks at the cusp of Little Round Top.

"Monk, I'm a good ten feet away from the edge; the ground is solid," the F.B.I. agent told him firmly, "I just want a better view down into the Wheatfield."

"But I think you can see it just as well from back here," the detective protested, "And you're making..."

And then he heard it: the sharp crack of a rifle from the valley below. His head jerked around faster than a hummingbird's wings. Ominously, a loud cry rose up once the echo from the blast had died down. He couldn't recognize who it was, but he knew it couldn't be good. "Oh no," he breathed softly.

"What, you think that was real, Monk?" Don asked him, worried. Adrian wasn't paying attention. Almost blindly he charged down the slope all the way to the bottom, slipping about halfway down and rolling down the rest of the way. He landed in some mud, completely ruining his pant leg. But he for once wasn't concerned with that. He glanced desperately around. Due to the echo it had been hard to tell where the shot had come from. Which meant the victime could have been anyone. "HELLO!!??" he cupped his hands to his lips and called out as loud as he could. "CAPTAIN!!?? NATALIE!!??"

"You're not going to get them that way, Monk," Don slid to a stop beside him. He pulled out his phone and started dialing. "Dad, are you there?" he asked his father breathlessly, "You're all right? Good. Has anyone...?"

He jumped in shock as a pair of braying horses leaped out of the trees right in front of him. It was the woman, and Adrian was relieved they were all right. "You, you didn't see anything?" he asked them.

"It sounded like it came from over your way," Sharona told him, deep concern on her own face, "Adrian what's...?"

There came a flurry of hard footsteps from behind. "Don!" Charlie sounded very scared. He skidded to a halt next to his brother, looking pale, "Don, Devil's Den, I was there, hurry, they...!"

He flinched ever so slightly when he noticed the women were there with them. Adrian knew what this meant. His eyes went very wide. That narrowed the field of victims down to two possibilities...two very horrifying possibilities...

The next thing he knew, he ws running hard in the direction of Devil's Den, everyone else's footsteps thumping behind him. Scenery flew by in a blur. One by one, unnerving sights came into view: tree branches with scar marks from the bullet's path...the horse still bucking--riderless--by the nearest creek...the cell phone lying on the ground, over which Ambrose could be heard shouting frantically, "Hello!? Hello!? Someone talk to me!!!" And then it came into sight: the motionless figure against the large rock, being cradled by a sobbing, slightly larger figure. Adrian ground abruptly to a halt at the sight. His legs no longer had the ability to move.

Natalie's, however, did. "NOOOOOO!!!!" her agonized scream echoed across the entire battlefield. Like a rocket she flung herself at her daughter's limp form. "OH GOD, NO!!!" she screeched, shaking her figure hysterically, "PLEASE GOD NO! OH BABY NO, DON'T GO!! SPEAK TO ME!!!! PLEASE GOD, SAY SOMETHING!!!!!"

But Julie reminded horrifyingly still and devoid of any clear sign of life. Adrian couldn't take it. He slumped to the ground, utterly mortified. Another thump landed next to him. "I was right over there," Charlie mumbled numbly, pointing at the clearing next to the rocks, "He must have just missed..."

"Don't feel guilty," Adrian's voice was barely audible, "Look at the trees," his finger weakly pointed at the fingerlike boughs behind them, "The bullet singed off the bark when it passed. Look at its path. They weren't aiming for you," his expression contorted with a painful answer to an unbearably painful situation, "Julie WAS the target. They aimed for her..."


	10. Help from the FBI

"Sir, please, I'm asking you for the last time, the wallpaper is just fine," the nurse on duty in the hospital waiting room back in Harrisburg chided Adrian, who was obsessively fiddling at the seams.

"This is all wrong," the detective mumbled softly, flicking away at the edges, "Got to correct it, got to do something..."

"Sir, I'll have to inform..."

"LOOK DON'T BOTHER ME!!!!" Adrian yelled at her. The nurse, stunned, stepped back and left him alone. Adrian thumped his head against the wall in despair. He felt so helpless and miserable.

The last three hours had been the second most excruciating of his life. Sharona had at least been able to stop the bleeding from the wound, but Julie had remained unconscious up till the point the ambulance had mercifully arrived. She'd been in emergency surgery for the last two hours, and Adrian didn't know how much longer he could take the suspense without coming apart. Worse, he deeply feared how Natalie was going to take it if things did not go well. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted she was still at the window she'd been kneeling by without moving for the last half hour, still praying intently. He had a strong feeling this was exactly how she'd reacted when she'd gotten the letter that Mitch was not coming back.

Speaking of Mitch, the detective saw him rematerialize next to his wife, looking solemn. He put a misty hand on her shoulder and rubbed it reassuringly. Natalie seemed to ease up a small bit from this act of comfort. Not wishing to disturb her, Adrian raised his hand towards Mitch and gestured him over. "You've got to do something," he whsipered frantically once they were face to face, "Please, bring her out of it safely, none of us can go on without...!"

"It's not my decision to make, Monk," Mitch shook his head, "If it's her time, there's not much else that can be done. What I'm doing now is all I can do."

"But there's got to be something!" Adrian picked up the chairs in the waiting room and shifted them around, not noticing or caring that in his despair he was leaving them crooked, "It can't end like this! Not like this! If she can't...!"

"Adrian, who are you talking to?" came Sharona's equally stressed-out voice behind him.

"Uh...my, myself," Adrian quickly spun and flashed an innocent smile. He looked over his shoulder to see Mitch had gone back to comforting Natalie, which the detective guessed was better than doing nothing at all. His former employee stared at him suspiciously. "Maybe you need testing as well," she said with a long, helpless sigh, "I don't know how we're going to make it through without..."

"It's my fault," Benjy spoke up from behidn her. His mother spun. "Why you?" she asked, concerned.

"It was my idea to go there; I put her in harm's way," he admitted tearfully, "I'm bad luck, everyone around me gets hurt: first the maid, now her..."

"Oh don't you dare think that," Sharona hugged him close, "This is not your fault at all. You're the sweetest, most wonderful child anyone can wish for. Why don't we go down the cafeteria and have something to eat? I think we need to get away from all this right now."

She led him off towards the elevators. Adrian slumped back into the middle chair in the row nearest to the operating room doors and stared miserably straight ahead. The suspense of waiting was clearly having an darker effect on the rest of the group as well. Disher was staring ahead as well, not even noticing the magazine in his lap, while Stottlemeyer had been pacing in the same tight circle for the last half hour, openly sobbing for only the fourth time that Adrian had known him. His father hadn't even bothered coming up, looking too shocked to be able take it. He'd been down in the cafeteria all this time with a similarly morose Ambrose, although Adrian suspected he didn't really have an appetite for anything at the moment.

There was a shuffling into the seat next to him. "You should know I ran the shooting angle into a standard radius algorithm," an equally distant Charlie told him, "Any news?"

"None whatsoever," Adrian said without turning around, "I'm getting worried now."

"Well if it's any comfort, Don's searching Big Round Top for the shooter's location," the mathmatician told him, "Given the diameter available from the distance the bullet traveled, we narrowed down the possible field to an area of about three square miles. I just hope I'm not off on...the situation being..."

He put his head in his hands. "I never understand how the criminal mind works," he admitted slowly, "It's like a foreign set of logic, why anyone would want to do something like this. To get a glimpse into this mind is frightening. There was this one time the F.B.I. office got shot up. For the longest time I didn't want to be..."

Adrian held up his hand to silence him, as the doors to the emergency room were now swinging open. The surgeon whom he recognized as the one who'd been assigned to Julie shuffled out. The waiting room went deathly quiet. "Mrs. Teeger?" he called out.

"Yes!?" Natalie charged right up to him, "Please tell me she'll live, please give me some good news...!?"

"OK, the good news is, we were able to extract the bullet without any problems, and it doesn't appear to have damaged any vital organs," the surgeon told her, "Unfortunately, we can't be sure that side effects won't surface, so I'm afraid she's going to remain in a medically-induced coma until we have the chance to..."

"That isn't good enough!" her mother seized him suddenly by the collar, "I can't live without her, do you understand me!? I want to know for sure she's all right, so get back in there and fix whatever needs to be fixed, right now!!"

"Mrs. Teeger, did you even hear me!?" the surgeon looked very worried for his own health, "There's not much else we can do at the moment that...!"

"I DON'T CARE!!!" Natalie bellowed, shaking him hysterically, "GET BACK IN THERE AND HELP MY BABY!! GIVE HER SOMETHING, ANYTHING, OR I'LL RIP YOU LIMB FROM LIMB, YOU (she used a rather strong phrase to describe the surgeon, one Adrian would not have thought her capable of saying under any other circumstances)!!!! I SWEAR TO GOD I'M NOT JOKING!!! NOW DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING!!!!!!"

"Nurse, help me!!" the surgeon screamed the nearest one. The nurse took one look at the situation, and waved frantically to some passing orderlies. These men rushed forward and pulled the still shrieking Natalie off him. "I think she needs some medical attention of her own," he instructed him, taking deep breaths, "Several ccs of tranquilizers, full dose."

The orderlies hauled the sobbing Natalie down the hall. Adrian note a somber Mitch following them, unnoticed by anyone else. He stat back down in his seat, amazed that for once he was taking a situation more maturely than she was.

The ringing of the elevator heralded Don's arrival in the waiting room. "What's the news?" he breathlessly asked his brother. Charlie related to him what the surgeon had just said. Don breathed a sigh of relief. "I wanted to say, good work on the radius bit," he commended him, "I found the shooter's location. He was atop a hemlock on the top of Big Round Top."

"Fifty calliber rifle?" Adrian guessed. This would match the wound he'd noted Julie had received.

"Yep," the F.B.I. agent nodded, "Found the casing. But the bad news is, whoever did fire it, Monk, he is a psycho. Check what he wrote after he fired."

He held up a photo he'd taken. A chill ran down Adrian's spine as he saw the shooter had written the words ISN'T FEAR WONDERFUL? in the snow. "Three sets of footprints," the detective pointed at the trails visible in the snow, "The one on the left is the freshest one; the snow's looser around it. That's all I can tell you from that." His head slouched forward into his lap. "There's got to be something we're not seeing here," he lamented, "Some lead we didn't pick up. What, I don't know."

"Well there is one way to go," Don told him, "Since we've got an Afghan rebel in custody, we might as well talk to someone who's an expert of Afghan rebels."

* * *

"Now, you, you do keep your office nice and clean," Adrian asked Don. They were back in the computer lab at Gettysburg College, where Charlie was setting up a live video connection back to F.B.I. headquarters in Los Angeles, "I, I can't go through with this is the place isn't clean." 

"The janitor does it twice a day," his associate told him, "So nothing for you to worry about, Monk."

"Here we go," Charlie announced as a new screen popped up on the computer. An African-American man sat at the monitor on the other end. "Don, what's happening?" he told his superior upon noticing the call was from him, "Say, is that Monk with you there?"

"Yes, hel, hello," Adrian waved at him, "You, your tie isn't quite right there."

The man glanced down and quickly straightened it out. "David, put Colby on," Don instructed him.

"Uh,..." the man's brow furled, "Are you sure I can't..."

"I said put him on," his boss told him in a firmer tone, "We've got something here in Gettysburg that requires his knowledge."

"Right, sure, I'll get him," David looked someone disappointed. He stepped out of frame. Adrian winced as a much sloppier-dressed man sat down at the other terminal. "I, I can't work with him," he said, turning away, "I think the other guy'll be just fine for what we need."

Don ignored him. "All right, Colby, I've got a Taliban gun-running operation going on over here," he informed the newcomer, "If you know anything at all about Abdul Hassan al-Waziri, tell me."

"Abdul al-Waziri?" Colby looked very thoughtful. "So you do know something?" Adrian had picked up the inflection of familiarity in his voice.

Colby looked around his cubicle, as if he didn't want anyone to know he was going to say whatever he knew. He took a very deep breath. "Abdul al-Waziri has been helping arm the Taliban through American leaks since we went in," he said slowly, "Duane Carter was one of his primary suppliers."

"Damn him," Don growled, slugging the desk, "He just loved selling the whole country out to everyone. All right, how long did he do it, and who else was involved?"

He gave his subordinate a very piercing glance. "Look, I don't know all the specifics," Colby said with a defensive edge, "At the time I didn't have a clue what he was up to; he went out at night and told me he was going on top level reconnaisance work. This was before he saved my life, so if I'd known then he was collaborating with the people we were supposed to be fighting, I would have turned him in then and there. Carter stole weapons from supply depots around where we were stationed and handed them over to al-Waziri at convenient times, for thousands of dollars per weapon. After he was arrested, I thought he'd confess everything, but apparently he took that plot to the grave."

"The, the coffee pot behind you, it's an inch higher than it should be, can you fix it?" Adrian asked him, taking care not to look directly at the uneven Colby.

"No, sit down," Don told Colby as he started to rise up, "If this is as big as you say, it couldn't have just been Carter working with this guy. He said nothing to you about any of his fellow contacts at all?"

"He mentioned the name Scorpion a couple of times, but I never met the guy or knew anything else about him," Colby emphasized every word carefully, "Look, Don, you can trust me on this, I swear; now that Carter's dead, I have nothing to hide about him."

Don put a hand over his face. Adrian could tell he wasn't entirely sure whether he believed everything he'd been told. "All right, in that case, I want you and everyone else to run a check on everyone Carter may have been in touch with over the last six years," he told his subordinate, "The moment you find anyone who looks the least bit suspicious, I want to hear about it."

"What's going on over there, Don?"

"What's going on is Carter's replacement's sending al-Waziri weapons right here; a girl just got shot over the whole thing," Don said wearily, "This is very serious business, and I do sincerely hope you're not keeping anything from me now, because if you are, you might be right back in hot water."

"It's the truth, I swear on my life," Colby all but pleaded him, "I'll have everything I can find before the day's out, promise."

"See to it," his superior said. Once Colby disconnected, he gave the table another hard whack. "Damn you, Carter, damn you," he grumbled out loud.

"Old friend?" Adrian asked.

"He only spied on us for the Chinese," his associate related to him, "Colby was his best friend, so when it looked like the two of them...you don't want to hear the whole story, Monk."

"They were implicated together, so you're not entirely sure if you can trust his word on it," Adrian had already figured it out, prompting the brothers to stare at him in surprise. "It's, it's a blessing, and a curse," the detective said, "Well, if Carter's dead, where can we look next?"

Don's cell rang before he could answer this. "Eppes?" he greeted the caller. He all but fell backwards out of his chair in shock from what he was being told. "And you have no idea how it happened!?" he demanded, "All right, we'll be right there. Big trouble, Monk," he told the detective, "al-Waziri escaped; they have no clue how he got out."

Adrian sighed in frustration; their only palpable suspect was gone. "This is shaping up to be lousy day," he grumbled, straightening out the computer cables leading into the hard drive, "I'll call everyone else, see if anyone's emotionally up for it."

"What should I do?" Charlie asked his brother.

"You've still got that paper with the code?" Don inquired. When Charlie held it up, he said, "Crack it. We need to know what they're trying to tell us before anyone else gets hurt."


	11. Cracking the Code Little By Little

"Thank you for coming," Sheriff Gregory greeted the two of them as they entered his office, "Is the girl going to be all right?"

"We, we really don't know yet," Adrian admitted worriedly, straightening out the calendar on the wall, "So you have no idea how al-Waziri escaped?"

"Come see for yourself," Gregory waved them into the back, "I'd just given him lunch, I walked into the office for all of one minute, and when I looked back in he was gone. I don't know. Maybe you can find something. And I haven't touched it since he got out, I can tell you now."

He gestured at the cell the Taliban militant had previously been confined to, still locked firmly. Adrian paced back and forth in front of it, making obtuse hand gestures. "And he had no access to the key?" he inquired.

"It was on my belt the whole time; it would have been out of his reach," Gregory shook his head, "No duplicates either."

"No signs of drilling, the walls and floor are completely intact," Adrian sighed, "No vents, either. There's no way he could have gotten out of there. No one saw anything at all?"

"No, and I asked the people next door," the sheriff told him, "Nothing. He's just vanished into thin air."

"As if this whole case didn't need to get any stranger," Don shook his head as well, "Invisible intruders, people getting in and out of locked rooms without a trace, ghost stories. If this were Halloween, I'd..."

There came a rattling sound as Adrian started seperating the cashews inside a metal box on Gregory's desk. "Don't, don't mind me," he told them, placing larger and smaller nuts into even rows, "Did you get anything out of him, Sheriff?"

"Not from him, no, but I did call the armory," Gregory told him, "We've still got a good amount of weapons out there; the stash you found in al-Waziri's hideout is only about half of what was stolen. It was too complex a robbery to have been done by one person, they think."

"Then the question is, who else is al-Waziri working with?" Don posited, "And how are they getting the weapons to him?"

"And how did they know Bill Burroughs, and by extension John Turcotte, was onto them?" Adrian added, bagging several peanuts so the rows would all have an even number of nuts, "And what do they hope to gain from abducting the Turcottes? And how were Breckinridge and the rest of the C.I.A. agents killed in a sealed room? There has to be a more rational reason than ghosts. I hope the professor can figure out the code soon enough; there's too many tangents here to work with."

"Code?" Gregory inquired with raised eyebrows.

"Phil Seiderbaum had written some kind of code, we're still trying to figure it out," Don explained to him, "My brother's working to break..."

Just then his cell phone rang; from what Adrian could see it was in fact Charlie calling. "Yeah Charlie, what've you got?" his brother asked him when he activated it.

"Uh, bad news, Don," Charlie told him grimly, "The code's gone. Someone stole it when my back was turned."

Both his brother and Adrian smacked their heads in frustration simultaneously. "All right, all right, we'll be right back," Don said wearily, "Might as well head back, Monk."

"I, I still have to clean the bathroom in here," Adrian pointed at it, "It clearly hasn't been done in a while; I told Sharona to bring the utensils when..."

"No time," his associate starting to drag him towards the door. "Ac, actually, one more thing," the detective held up his hand, lining up the nutcrackers on top of Gregory's computer so they were exactly equidistant from each other, "Sheriff, you, you wouldn't happen to know if there's a discount shop that sells worthwhile items around? I got barred from most of the stores in town."

"Try the strip malls on Route 30," Gregory suggested, "You might find whatever you're looking for there. In the meantime, let me know if you find anything else."

Adrian nodded. Gregory frowned as the two of them left and scratched his head. "Hmm..."

* * *

"Good, you made it," Adrian greeted a harried-looking Sharona back at the computer lab, "Any new news?" 

"None," she shook her head, "I offered to help with anything, but they said they could handle it. Medical professionals..."

"Is Natalie OK now?"

"If you mean calmer, yes, the tranquilizers did the job. They say she'll be up and about in an hour or so, but I know she won't be fine until she knows...what the hell is so funny, Adrian!?"

The detective couldn't suppress a small chuckle. "Oh, I was just thinking, if all those online fan people knew right now that you walked out without telling me and permanently wrecked the very fabric of my existence, they'd love this moment," he admitted, "Just you and me again for the moment, like old times. Feels interesting, doesn't it?"

"All it feels is revolting, Adrian, that you are still so incredibly insensitive," Sharona gave him a harsh glare, "The Teegers are going through serious trauma, and your first thought is how..."

"All right, don't make me put the two of you in a corner," Jack piped up from the table where Charlie was seated. "I couldn't take it anymore, it was too horrible being there," he admitted to his son, "So I figured I'd go see how you guys were doing."

"Yeah, I guess being around people who actually can show affection was too much for your brain," the nurse retorted at him, "I didn't invite you to come along for..."

"Could you keep it down, please!?" Don raised his voice. He turned to his brother and asked exasperatedly, "So run by me again what happened?"

"I had to...take care of some stuff," Charlie admitted, shifting about uncomfortably, "When I got back, the paper wasn't here anymore," he pointed at the exact spot it had been, "I didn't hear any doors open, no windows creaking, nothing."

"No, no signs of a break in," Don admitted, noticing no tampering with the lab's windows. He kicked a chair in frustration, "As if anything else couldn't go wrong with this case."

"But I did make some progress," Charlie told him, holding up another paper, "I was able to find about five letters from the pattern. Those representing the letters in 'the' were easiest to break down, so I've got about one sixteenth of..."

The computer started buzzing again with an incoming video message. A woman was now sitting at the console in Los Angeles. "Don, we've got the contact you were looking for," she told him.

"OK, good work Megan," Don nodded, gently pushing his brother aside, "Who is it?"

"His name's Lester Harvey," Megan typed in a few keys at her console, and Harvey's image appeared in full on the screen, "Records show Duane Carter made fourteen calls to him over a two year period "

"Hang on, I've actually heard of this guy," Jack exclaimed, "His brother Vernon ran a truck stop out by Flagstaff for close to a decade; he mentioned Lester a lot when I stopped there. Vernon was fingered for the murder of a young drifter that stayed at his place, but he skipped town before charges could be filed."

"Wow, small world," Don stared at him, "It seems like every one of us knows someone involved in this case."

"TOO small a world," Adrian commented, "It's almost like there's too many coincidences here, as if this whole thing was thought up by one of those online fan writers."

He paused for a moment, as if this had somehow been a profound statement. "Well anyway, Lester Harvey was investigated as part of a terrorist plot against a federal building in upstate Michigan," Megan continued for their benefit, "His code name in the Michigan Militia was Scorpion. And the agent assigned to that case has since gone missing, records show."

"John Turcotte?" Sharona asked.

"Yes. How'd...Sharona Fleming? Hey, is Monk there?" Megan was impressed.

"Yes, I'm, I'm here," Adrian leaned forward, "This, this is my father," he gestured at Jack, "You don't know him yet, it hasn't been relevant in the series yet, but he walked away when I was eight and destroyed my life to the core."

"Well, glad to know I did make a difference after I left," the former trucker shrugged.

"I watch your show every now and then; I can see why people like it," Megan told him, "It's nice to know the same people are going to be making one about us soon. Well, if they're going to start from the point Charlie said they'd start, I won't be there from the beginning. Too bad."

"Don't feel bad, I'm not really working for Adrian anymore," Sharona informed her, "I'm just here now by some twist of cosmic fate, like a writer...now look what you've done Adrian, now you've got me doing it too!" she yelled at him.

"Doing what?" he was confused.

"Anyway, Megan, Lester Harvey, what else did you find?" Don interrupted before things could get crazier.

"He signed up for the army in 2001 under a false name," Megan said, "Apparently his mother was in the North Tower when it went down." After an uncomfortable pause, she went on, "He openly expressed his belief that the military wasn't hard enough on the Afghanis, that they all needed to be punished for what had happened. He was arrested after he was found to have participated in the torture of several Afghan civilians that were mistakenly captured as fighters. During his court martial, he yelled at the judges that they were the traitors for not being harsh enough, and they would pay if they convicted him. The court took it in stride and gave him fifteen years and a dishonorable discharge. But the convoy carrying him to the states and prison was attacked, and he escaped in the confusion. He's been under the radar since then."

"And he knew Carter before that?" her superior inquired.

"Army records show he was assigned to the same unit as Carter for five months," she told him, adding quickly, "This was after Colby was transferred to another part of the country. So what he told you's probably how it actually happened."

Don sighed out loud. "All that time Carter was right in front of us, and we never investigated this," he mumbled. "All right, tell everyone to put out an A.P.B. for Harvey. And try and find anyone else who served with him; we need any lead we can to find this guy."

"Well that's going to be a little easier said than done," Megan told him, "Harvey was disfigured in the attack that freed him. They think he might have had complete facial surgery, so there's no telling what he looks like right now. We can..."

"Sorry, sorry, it's the star on the tree behind you," Adrian interrupted, "It has seven points."

"And?"

"And, could, could you add a point or take one away?"

"Tell you what I can do," Megan walked over to the tree and removed the star completely. "Much, much better," the detective nodded, "Ac, Actually, I've got another thought, check for whether there've been other robberies at other federal armories. Maybe this has been going on for a while and we just haven't heard about it."

"Will do," she nodded, "Hope you get a white Christmas over there, Monk."

"Why? It means I'll have more snow to even out?"

"You really are one in a million, you know that Monk," she told him with a sly smile as she disconnected. "OK, let me see if I've got this all figured out," Jack proposed, "This Duane Carter guy decided to make a fast buck at our expense and started selling the Afghans our weapons. Lester Harvey finds out--he might have stumbled onto the scheme by accident and blackmailed him, I'm guessing--and gets involved as well. They leave Afghanistan and continue their operations covertly over here. Carter gets arrested and killed," he glanced at the Eppeses, who nodded to confirm this, "So Harvey takes over his end of the operations on his own. Well, likely not on his own; I'd give any amount of money to say he's got Vernon with him, since he's got nowhere else to run to himself, and if there's one person you can trust in these matters, it's your next of kin."

"As if you really know anything about that," Sharona grumbled. Jack ignored her. "The C.I.A. gets suspicious," he went on, "Turcotte recognizes his old enemy, and sends in Bill Burroughs to flush him out. Harvey figures him out, and has him killed, and takes out two innocents in the process. Wait, on second thought, maybe first he realized it was Turcotte on him, kidnapped him and his daughter, then forced him to admit who his agent was. And now that we're getting close, they're after us too."

"But something still doesn't seem to add up," his son pointed out, "How are they getting the weapons to al-Waziri? During a reenactment, you can't just walk around the battlefield in the middle of the night with modern weaponry; there'd be too many witnesses. And if they wanted to get us off his back, why aim for Julie even if it does instill us with fear? It would make more sense to take Agent Eppes or me out. I can't help thinking there's some factors here we're still not considering."

"I can take what we know and plug it into a vector theorem," Charlie proposed, "If there's any data that doesn't fit the pattern, it'll show up."

"All right, but first I want to know where you think al-Waziri's headed," his brother told him, "Which direction seems the best way for him to go."

Charlie thought this over for a minute. He wrote several equations down on scrap paper. "Maybe not in any direction," he proposed. "Imagine if you will that you're in the park and throwing a stick to your dog. He won't come back until he searches it out and finds it."

"I'm, I'm not sure I understand," Adrian frowned.

"Well, OK, it's not the best explanation," Charlie shrugged, "My point is, if al-Waziri hasn't gotten all of his weapons yet, he won't go anywhere until he does. Now since the jail was here in relation to the battlefield,..." he drew a circle on a spare piece of paper. "It's not, not a perfect circle," Adrian pointed out.

"Doesn't have to be," Sharona grumbled in his ear.

"But if he's an ace mathematician, he should know..."

"Shhh!" Don hissed at them. Charlie drew a dot representing the prison on the paper outside the circle. "They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line," he said, being sure to draw the line carefully straight for Adrian's benefit to the middle of the circle, "My guess is he took this here to the most isolated..."

In what was becoming a repeating pattern, Don's cell phone abruptly rang again. "Yeah?" he asked, his face now going white. "They did WHAT, Sheriff? Oh God. Do a prelim search, we'll be right over. Amy Seiderbaum," he grimly told the others, "I was right that this guy's a psycho; it's not pretty at all what happened."


	12. Another Plot Foiled

Stottlemeyer and Disher were waiting with Gregory at the Seiderbaums when the others arrived. "Lance here gave us the heads-up," the captain informed them, looking quite green in the face, "You may not want to go in there, Monk, it's rather terrible."

"First, let's get a picture," Disher dug out his camera with the malfunctioning flash and held it up, "The four of us together on the crime by ourselves."

He pressed the button before they could object, blinding them all. "Hey no need to overreact!" Sharona groaned, covering her eyes from the flash, "It's not like we've been apart for four hundred years."

"Sure seems like it, though," Disher produced his flowers again, "Once we crack this, would you join...?"

Stottlemeyer seized the flowers and stuffed them down his adjutant's pants. "Serious business, Lieutenant, a woman was gruesomely murdered," he told him firmly, "Make out time will come after we've finished with that. Monk, come on, we've got work to do."

"One thing first," Adrian pointed at the icicles hanging from the porch awning, "They're not very responsible if they can't keep these even."

He drew his nail file and scraped away at the longest one. "Come on Monk, this is serious," Gregory sounded uncharacteristically stern, "Something awful's going on in my town, and if you can't do anything about this, I'm going to take a load of heat."

"You know you're right. The voters are going to love how we've done all the work on this case for you," Sharona told him off. Gregory flushed with an insulted look and mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, "much better on TV." "If you'll concentrate, Monk," he told the detective, "She's in the den. I got an emergency call from her as I was driving by, and when I got here it was already too late and the guy was long gone. I guess at least she and Phil are together again somewhere. Brace yourself, though, it's almost unreal. Nothing I've ever seen before."

His work on the icicle finished, Adrian pocketed the nail file and walked cautiously inside. His eyes immediately jerked away once they'd laid eyes on Mrs. Seiderbaum's body on the floor; whatever she'd gone through in her final moments had to fit most if not all U.N. definitions of torture. Even more unnerving, written on the walls in more blood were the words CRAZY ANTHONY...and over top of them, larger letters reading HELP ME. "He, he wanted to stop himself from what he was doing," he mumbled once he managed to regain his voice, "But he couldn't."

"How can you be sure it wasn't her who wrote for help?" Disher inquired, unable to look at the destruction himself.

"The handwriting's the same; it was the same person," Adrian stumbled back out onto the porch, in dire need of fresh air, "Why, why kill her? She didn't know anything. None of it makes any sense."

"I'm guessing it was Phil's paper, somebody knew Phil knew and thought he'd told her," Don tried to rationalize. Despite his long career in law enforcement, even he was unnerved by the way things were playing out, "Do you think it was al-Waziri, Monk?"

"Under normal circumstances, yes, but this was an irrational crime," the detective sighed, "al-Waziri's a man on the run; he can't afford to make any irrational moves right now. This whole case is getting too irrational, too many trails to follow."

"I'll tell you one thing, it sure beats out your typical Crimelab S.F. episode," Jack stated, "They never did anything more than the simplest plots. I could have guessed the murderer five minutes into every one of them."

"And what the hell does Crimelab S.F. have to do with any of this!?" Sharona berated the hotelier, "Not only are you as insensitive as Adrian, you manage to make even less sense than he does."

"Well forgive me if I'm trying to lighten up a terrible situation," Jack grew defensive, "I'm just as appalled that someone would do something as horrific as this to someone as you are."

"Well, you failed miserably. Just as you failed in your duty as Adrian's father."

"Look, you've gotten your point across with that, Mrs. Fleming, and it's really getting irritating now. I've made terrible mistakes, and I have to live with them, but I'm here now for Adrian, and I'm a changed man. It's not a black and white world, damn it, and you've got to come to grips with that."

"Changed? People don't change, I know that now, and I should have known it..."

"Stop, both of you, just stop!?" Adrian roared, prompting both of them to whirl in surprise that he of all people would raise his voice to them, "Now if you can't act maturely, I'll ask both of you to leave, alright!?"

"Sure, no problem," his former assistant mumbled softly, "I was right, Natalie is having a bad influence on..."

"Shhhh!" Stottlemeyer hissed, clearly agitated with the whole thing as well, "Or you'll have to stay after school. Monk needs to concentrate for...where are you going, Monk?"

"Have to do something," Adrian told him. He strolled into the kitchen, where the Seiderbaums had magnets of al fifty states set up on the refrigerator. He put a wipe over his fingers and started pushing the magnets as close together as possible. "Come on, Monk, can't you overcome that for just one minute!?" Don all but pleaded with him, "We've got to focus and try and solve at least one crime we've got here!"

"I am. This is a crime that we didn't fix this earlier," Adrian dropped Vermont on the floor. He picked it up and started to put it back into place...

And stopped inches from the refrigerator. He held the magnet farther away from it. Then brought it closer again. Then he walked to the window and listed to the sounds of another reenactment going on over the ridge. "I've got it," he breathed, realization coming on his face, "I think I might have solved it. Professor," he called to Charlie, "You've got that line paper on where al-Waziri might be still?"

"Right here," Charlie ran over and dug it out. Adrian took it and held it up to the light on the ceiling. "South end of Seminary Ridge, inside a cave," he announced, "Better call in some emergency response units; al-Waziri's not going to come quietly. I think we'll catch the Harveys there too. But first I've got to get ready."

* * *

"Turn off the lights, Monk, for the love of God," Stottlemeyer mumbled to him. There was a grumble of agreement from the half dozen of so S.W.A.T. team members that had arrived to help with the arrest at Don's request. All of them were advancing through the woods on the south side of Seminary Ridge towards the cave in question (Don had asked Charlie to stay behind out of harm's way, and Adrian had managed to convince his father to do the same), "He's spook if he's sees anything," he continued, grimacing as Adrian shone one of his flashlights in his face to see his lips moving, "And you do realize you're a very visible target up there?"

"Well, I'm not walking through the snow," Adrian protested. He swayed, finding it a little hard to stay balanced on the stilts he'd brought to avoid such a thing. As it was now pitch dark, he was also wearing his night vision goggles. It was through these that he now noticed something out of the ordinary to their right. "Hold, hold it, found it," he announced, shining both beams and his headlamp towards what looked like a large iron cold tablet lying on the ground. "What is it supposed to be?" Disher inquired, lifting it up.

"How al-Waziri gets the weapons," the detective explained, "It works like this: they've been doing it at every reenactment they've been to. Lester and Vernon Harvey load the guns they've got into these and then stick them in a cannon at night. Vernon probably plays the gunner in each show. They aim it at the most remote location on the battlefield in question, and during the heat of the battle, they fire it towards there, where al-Waziri's waiting to pick up the goods for his fellow fighters back in Afghanistan. No one looks up during these mock battles, and they wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary if they had. Sometimes they repeated the practice at night too, when it could be passed off as ghostly activity by people who wouldn't know any better."

"But I still don't get how you figured that out from a magnet," Don had to know.

"I didn't. I figured out how Breckinridge and the other agents were killed," Adrian told him, "When we were back at the sheriff's office before the code was stolen, the exact invoice of what had been taken from the armory was written down on his desk. One of them was a powerful experimental supermagnet. One of the Harveys must have been hiding in the room next to the C.I.A.'s secret chamber. He must have set up a tape recorder when they ran out to check our room with the ghostly sounds on it, then when Breckinridge and the others went back inside, he turned on the magnet, and the pull must have yanked back the triggers on their guns. That's why we found nothing in that room; there was nothing in there to begin with."

Don nodded and held up his hand for them to be quiet. The party was just about at the cusp of the cave. A dim light could be seen from inside. The F.B.I. agent held up his hand, ready to give the signal for the S.W.A.T. men to rush in...

Unfortunately, it was at this moment that Sharona's cell phone rang loudly. Seconds later, a loud rushing sound came zooming towards the entrance of the cave. "DOWN!" Don screamed to the S.W.A.T. members, who obligingly dove for cover as mortar rounds started landing through the woods, pinning them down. "Was it this necessary to call?" Sharona bellowed into the receiver as she and Adrian scrambled to cover behind a bush.

"She's all right," Natalie sobbed joyfully on the other end, "Julie's going to live..."

"That, that is wonderful, Natalie," Adrian dodged an errant mortar shell, "We're, we're going to die here now, so that's going to even it out OK."

Another shell landed nearby, severing his stilts and sending him falling to the ground. A silhouetted figure appeared in the opening of the cave, dragging another figure with him: John Turcotte, Adrian strongly presumed. "Throw down your weapons or else he will meet his doom!" came al-Waziri's barking threat, holding a machine gun to Turcotte's head.

"Stand down, stand down!" Don ordered the S.W.A.T. members. "Abdul, listen to me, let him go and come quietly," he tried to reason with the Taliban fighter.

"Quiet this!" al-Waziri emptied a clip into the woods. "It's over, Abdul, you're outnumbered, there's no point in throwing everyone's life away," the F.B.I. agent ducked to avoid the spray.

"You stupid Yankees, always putting too much value on human life," al-Waziri shouted back, "That is why we best you in the end every time!"

He unleashed another torrent of bullets. Don flattened himself to the ground. "Any suggestions?" he asked everyone else.

"I've got one," Disher was making a snowball. Once the firing stopped, and there was a clicking as al-Waziri unloaded the spent clip, the lieutenant rose up and flung the snowball at him...which missed the Taliban fighter by a mile. It did, however, crash into a large overhang of snow over the top of the cave, which promptly avalanched down on top of al-Waziri, burying him. Turcotte broke free and ran for the safety of the trees. He looked very much the worse for wear after his ordeal. "I don't know who you guys are, but thank you," he congratulated them, "You've just managed..." he looked over his shoulder and gasped at what he saw. "Sharona?"

"John?" she walked towards him. Then she decked him hard. "A construction worker, huh!?" she bellowed at him, "I HATE men who can't tell me the truth!"

"Do you honestly think I could have revealed information like that?" Turcotte rubbed his jaw, "Look, believe me, I wanted to say something, but the secrecy clause in..."

"Shhh!" Stottlemeyer hissed, "Someone else is coming."

Indeed, the fresh crunching of footsteps, as if someone was running through the woods towards them, could be heard. "Right on time," Adrian whispered out loud. Everyone shifted out of sight. "What the hell's going on out here?" came a familiar voice, "Where are you, Abdul? We've..."

The lights blazed on, bathing the two new figures in a bright glow. "Well, well, Eugene Collins, I presume," the captain strode towards the figure, "Or should I say, Lester Harvey? And you must be Vernon, so nice"

"Don't run," Don barked when the Harveys tried to make a break for it, "It's all over. We know what your little scheme's entailed. Just come along quietly.

Lester and Vernon glared at their arrestors as they were handcuffed. Adrian breathed a sigh of relief. It was all over...wasn't it...?

* * *

"I've been with the C.I.A. for fourteen years," Turcotte was admitting back at the station, "The whole construction job was the primary cover for our center of operations. We've been tracking the Harveys and al-Waziri for over a year now. How did you find me, anyway?"

"Simple mathematics," Charlie explained, "We determined your position to be close enough to the battlefield that al-Waziri could be around to receive his stolen weapons, but far enough away so he would be isolated."

"You, you did wash with the anti-bacterial soap I gave you twice?" Adrian asked, wiping at the one-way mirror looking into the interrogation cell, in which their prisoners were now sitting glumly.

"Yes, Monk, very thoroughly. They didn't expose me to any chemical agents," Turcotte reassured him.

"Does Becky know any of this?" Sharona gave him a harsh glare down, apparently not ready to let go of the fact he had been secretive about his career.

"No," Turcotte shook his head, looking guilty, "I wanted to, believe me. I would be lying if I said being on assignment so often hasn't caused some problems between us. I've been wanting to get out for some time; this was going to be my last case before I quit. I'd better give her a call; she's got to be worried sick by now."

Adrian abruptly remembered what the police in Summit had told him. "So, they didn't take Becky with you?" he frowned.

"What are you talking about, Monk?" Turcotte grew pale, "She went out with friends before the Harveys grabbed me, she was going to be back by eleven and...oh my God, you're not telling me something's...!"

"Something's not right here," Adrian looked puzzled. He made some more hand gestures. "If it wasn't the Harveys, then who would have taken her?" he thought out loud.

Before a horrified Turcotte could say anything, the door to the interrogation room opened up. Don and Stottlemeyer entered, prompting more glares from the prisoners. "OK, gentlemen, tonight's Christmas Eve," the captain greeted them, "So why don't you just tell us everything so we can enjoy the holiday?"

"You'll have to torture me, you fool, I am saying nothing," al-Waziri turned away and folded his hands across his chest. "All right, that's your call," Don told him. "Lester, Vernon, would you care to make it easier for us?"

"Look, you've made some kind of mistake, officer," Vernon protested, "We were just walking in the woods; we didn't do anything."

"If you didn't do anything, how do you explain this?" Don shoved the invoice for the missing armaments onto the table, "Five dozen assault rifles, two dozen rocket launchers, twenty grenade launchers. It'll be so easy to trace your fingerprints to the armory. We know that you and Duane Carter went into business together, and you've been carrying the load since he was busted."

"How the hell do you know anything about Carter?" Lester spoke up, groaning when he immediately realized he had implicated himself by mentioning Carter's name.

"Oh, we've got our sources, Les," Stottlemeyer leaned towards him, "And we know you guys have got the blood of at least six people on your hands, including the real Eugene Collins. Maybe you can tell us where you buried him."

"Don't you guys get it?" Lester growled defensively, "The government is illegitimate! They drive people like Vernon into the dust with their high taxes and impossibly high costs of living, then they refuse to take down the people who come after us! They're too busy sucking up to the Afghanis to bother to..."

"Hey, this is still a free country, Lester, you can think whatever you want about the government, but just because you don't like it doesn't give you the right to kill to get back at them," Don told him firmly, "First degree murder is not excusable under any form of government."

"So what I want to know," Stottlemeyer paced around behind him, "Why you two barbarians decided to scare us off by going after Julie. Why did she have to be the target of your sick thoughts?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Vernon asked him as innocently as possible.

"Ah come on, Vernon, don't play stupid with us!" Don roared at him, "You and Lester decided to get us off the trail, so you shot the girl to make us worry, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU, VERNON!?

"WHAT GIRL!?" Vernon bellowed, "I don't know anything about any girl! I shot Burroughs, yes, and Lester killed that creep Breckinridge, but we never shot at any girl! What kind of people do you take us for!?"

"I take you for the lowest kind of monster there is!" the captain thundered, "And before we go, you're going to tell us where you've taken John Turcotte's daughter too!"

"We don't have her, you moron, didn't you understand what my big-mouthed brother said!?" Lester elbowed his brother hard for confessing to the murders, "His daughter wasn't even in when we showed up and took him...DOH!"

He slapped his head in frustration at having confessed more misdeeds. Adrian had heard all he needed to. He rapped on the glass with his forearm. "One moment, please," Stottlemeyer exited the room. "What is it, Monk, I've got them in a corner," he said when he entered the observation room.

"They're telling the truth," Adrian told him, "They didn't shoot Julie or take Becky. They weren't breathing any heavier and maintained eye contact when you grilled them on it."

Everyone in the room stared at him in surprise. "You sure?" the captain asked, confused.

Adrian nodded firmly. "Somebody's still out there," he said, once again drawing the nail file and scraping away at the wax on several candles on the desk just outside, "Somebody very screwed up in the head. What is it we haven't seen so far? What data aren't we taking into account on this...?"


	13. He's Baaaaaaack

Adrian glanced up at the snow now beginning to fall (the local weatherman had said that a storm moving in would leave about five or six inches; he was hoping for an even six). They were standing on the corner outside General Pickett's Buffet, waiting for his father to return from the hospital with the rest of their party. The streets were starting to thin out of the last minute Christmas shoppers, and traffic had dwindled to the point where it was practically non-existent. Much like the other evening, Adrian was close to a rare sense of peace. Yet, the fact knowing one of the killers was still out there had him on edge, cancelling out the good vibes.

"Boy, Manny's probably getting really eager by now," he confided in the others, taking the moment to explain to the puzzled Eppeses, "I met him when I was briefly in the asylum; he's got a real fixation on Santa."

"Yeah, you should have seen that loony," Stottlemeyer chuckled, "Insisting Saint Nick has an evil twin named Stanley that he thought committed the murders we were looking into at the time. He's probably two inches from the TV screen watching every KGO SantaWatch update, then looks at the official NORAD tracking site when they're on commercial."

"I, I did wonder when I believed in him how Santa could do what he does and keep his sanity," Adrian flicked at the antennae on the nearest parked car, "Not only the flying up really high part, but what's he going to do if the reindeer have to...well, you know? Then you'd have to make sure the presents would be wrapped nice and even before putting them in the sack. And then there's the narrowness and filthiness of the chimneys; if I were him, I'd just politely knock on the door, and leave the toys on the porch if no one answers. And then even if you got inside, there could be germs everywhere. Why he'd even bother drinking the milk is beyond me; he's just asking to kill himself, assuming he could die in the sense we do, by..."

"Hold that thought, Monk, here they come," Disher was breaking into a big smile as Jack's shuttle slid to a stop at the curb next to them. "No, no problems coming back with the snow and all?" Adrian asked his father when he popped out.

"No trouble at all for our special passenger of the night," a look of deepest relief permeated Jack's face. Adrian helped him open the sliding door for the others inside. He broke into a warm smile as Julie cautiously stepped out to the ground, her mother holding one hand and Benjy the other. "It, it, it was a good ride back, wasn't it?" he asked brightly, the best thing he could find himself able to say.

"Very good, Mr. Monk," she smiled at him, swaying slightly on still unsure legs, "But they say as long as I take it easy, I'll be just fine."

"That's our girl all right," Alan rubbed her on the head, "She's a real gladiator; she'll take anything they can throw at her."

"Please don't say that, Mr. Eppes," Natalie openly shivered at even the implied thought of what else might be thrown at her daughter. "I just want to say thank you so much," she told Sharona, flinging her arms around her, "They said if you hadn't stopped the bleeding early on, she might never have made it to the hospital alive."

"It was the least I could do," her predecessor told her, "If she hadn't made it, you would have had a breakdown, and Adrian would have been left on his own and done something stupid for the ages."

"Ac, Actually, I'm getting a little better with that, you know; she left me alone to wander the streets a couple of weeks ago, nothing too major happened," Adrian stated. The rather unnerved look in Natalie's eye at this reminded him that he thus far hadn't bothered to tell her about his adventures in search of the woman whom he'd discovered had Trudy's corneas.

"Anyway, I don't know about you guys, but after this long and trying day, I could really use a nice, warm, full course meal," Alan rubbed his chest. He turned to the van, "Going to take a chance on this one?"

"I don't want to be alone out here," Ambrose quickly leaped from the shuttle. "Hey dork, nice coat, your husband make it for you?" jeered an over-pierced teenager passing by. Ambrose stoically ignored him, wrapping the fir coat tighter around himself as he followed everyone towards the door. "You, you had the easy part, Adrian, you had the way to get away from the nightmare in that waiting room," he told his brother, "I was in a stupor all day."

"I don't think I've quite thanked you yet either ," Natalie smiled at him, "I really, really appreciated you coming in to sit with me while I waited with Julie to wake up. It made me feel like I wasn't alone."

Ambrose smiled a big dopey smile in return. A sensation went through Adrian at that moment. He smiled as he noticed Mitch standing behind his wife. "Oh, you definitely weren't alone, Natalie, I can tell you that," he said, shooting Mitch a strong thumbs-up, "It, it is good to have you back, though."

"Certainly good to be back," Ambrose very quickly took off the fur and hung in in the coat room, "So, how's the case going since you told Dad to leave. Tell us you got the guy who made us think we were going to lose Julie."

"Uh,..." Adrian fumbled with how to best say what he knew, "We, we cracked the gun-smuggling case for good, but, um, as it, ah, is, none of them was the shooter this morning. So we're still looking for them," he turned away to avoid the freaked look on Natalie's face know her baby's attacker was still at large. "On, on a bright spot, though, we managed to find..."

"Mr. Turcotte," Benjy had noticed him sitting at what Adrian had reserved as their table (he'd wanted only one that was perfectly round--Charlie had helped give him the precise directions to the confused operator--and had an even number of seats arranged at perfectly equal distances from each other; unfortunately, Turcotte screwed this up by leaving them with an unlucky thirteen mouths to feed). "Was Becky with you? Where is she now?" the boy asked anxiously.

"I'm sorry Benjy, she's not here," Turcotte sniffed loudly, "We don't know who has her. If she's even..."

He completely broke down. "Hey now, it's Christmas, don't look at the downside of the equation, as my math genius boy here might say," Alan rubbed Charlie's shoulder, "Given how quickly this case has come together since this morning, odds are our dream team'll have her back in your arms by dawn's first light."

"I have drawn up a graph, Mr. Turcotte," Charlie held it up to him, "Using an exponential graphing system, you'll notice the red Xs form a cluster with the increasing line thorugh them. These are the murders committed by the Harveys in this case. As you can see, the black Xs, the murders committed by yet unknown parties, don't fit the pattern."

"Good, good, now instead of just showing me stuff I already know, just use that brain of yours to bring me back my daughter safely!" Turcotte begged him.

"How about we try one of the milennium problems to plug the data into, maybe the Poincare Conjecture or the Birch and Swinnerton-Dye Conjecture," Ambrose proposed.

"Well you know, there's a reason they're called the millenium problems; mathmeticians have been slaving away trying to prove them for centuries," Charlie pointed out to him, "We can't expect instant results because we need..."

His face lit up as he remembered the other key clue involved. "Mr. Turcotte, do you know Phil Seiderbaum?" he asked the C.I.A. agent.

"No," Turcotte was puzzled, "Why?"

"How about a certain code involving numbers, letters, and symbols? He was writing that down, his wife said when we talked to her."

"Now how could he have known that?" Turcotte's frown grew deeper, "That's departmental regulation code, a civilian wouldn't know..."

"He was bunked next to Bill Burroughs in the encampment," Adrian realized, "He must have seen Burroughs using it and figured out what it meant. Professor," he turned to Charlie, "You do remember the exact order of the symbols?"

"Yes I do," Charlie's face had lit up. He drew a paper from his pocket and started writing everything down. "Maybe we can help find your daughter after all."

"Mr. Monk!?" the nearest waitress was gasping now at the sight of him, "Everyone, come quick!" she cried out to the rest of the staff, "Monk's here!"

In what was becoming a common issue for him, Adrian was quickly surrounded by well-wishers. "I, I, I'm glad you all watch," he said uncomfortably, gesturing at both assistants for wipes to use on the pens he was being offered for autographs.

"We wouldn't miss it for the world!" bubbled a large older waitress, "In fact," she checked her watch, "I think it's on now. Ernie!" she called back to the cook, "Bring out the widescreen; Monk would like to watch his show in person."

"Uh, about, about the menu here," Adrian grasped the nearest one with a wipe covered palm and held it up, "You, you wouldn't happen to have fresh salad like this, and I mean fresh, otherwise there's nothing here I'd eat; oh, and Sierra Springs too."

"For you, Monk, anything, and tell them I'm rooting for you all the way," she told him, "Nothing'll make me stop watching until you find those cretins who killed your wife, nothing."

Adrian glanced over his shoulder at his assistants. "I, I hope so," he said, still having the nagging feeling that audiences would not take Sharona's departure from his life--now about a season away--well at all, "Well, thank, thank you kindly, glad to know there's people out there who care as much as I do."

He stopped for a minute to rearrange the rolls inside one of the deep trays at the buffet table with the tongs. Then he moved next to it and did the same thing with the carrots. "Come on, Monk, it's not the end of the world, especially since you won't eat them," Disher tugged his shoulder.

"Just, just trying to save all the other people in here with no protection. These things should be sterilized every five minutes or so," Adrian told him. Nonetheless, he shrugged and sat back down (trying to ignore the logs in the fireplace, which were burning at different rates) and watched as the cook wheeled the big screen TV up to their table. "Ah, the one where the guy was knocking off the jury," Alan recognized it immediately, "My second favorite one, actually."

"Not for me," Sharona grumbled, gesturing for the waitress to fill her glass with Diet Coke, "If you found you'd been led along by another man, you wouldn't find any mirth in it. Nor if you had to put up with the guy with the pipe in his head."

"Oh I liked him a lot when I saw it," Don burst into a chuckle, "I thought he was the killer for a while, though."

"I told you guys it had to be the Babcocks," Charlie told them with a triumphant edge, "All the data led straight to them, but do you listen to me, no. You wanted to figure it out all on your own."

"No need to gloat, Charlie, I knew it was them too," his father pointed out.

"No you didn't, you thought it was the laundry presser Monk drove crazy, that the whole thing was her leading him into a trap," Don corrected him.

"Now did I once even say laundry presser in that whole hour, Donnie? I think not."

"I counted three times in the first thirty minutes, Dad," Charlie informed him.

"I didn't say presser, Charlie, I said...dresser, yeah, the clues were under the dresser."

Adrian laughed to himself. It was interesting to see fans second-guessing the show. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a small gift shop in the corner. It would be now or never for the presents. He waited to see everyone else wasn't looking before sneaking over. It would have to be a series of uniform gifts out of time constraints. Luckily, such things were right in front of him. "I'll, I'll have ten Battefield magnets," he told the clerk, who nodded and started picking them off the wall.

"Is this what you've been looking over the last few days?" came Natalie's voice behind him. Adrian jumped from the shock before turning to face her. "It, uh, was, um, meant to be a surprise," he admitted, "Just like the ones in the maintenance closet, right?"

"How did...?" Natalie's eyes jerked toward Ambrose, eating obliviously at the table. "I, I had to do something, I had to get you presents as good as if not better than these," he went on as she shrugged and returned her gaze to him, "Unfortunately, these magnets were the best I could come up with. I, I hope you won't be upset and all that."

"Mr. Monk, you didn't need to do that," her features were a lot calmer than he would have thought, "It's not the presents you give that count. Take a look at Julie," she put a hand on his head and turned it so he was facing the girl, now enjoying a plate of mozerella sticks, "Just having her around with us--just being here together with everyone on Christmas--that's the best present you can ask for. It's a miracle, Mr. Monk, one made possible two thousand years ago when a boy was born in a stable and brought hope to all of us. That's the reason for the season."

Adrian shook his head. "Well, there's only one thing I can say to that," he said softly, "Sharona was absolutely right; you are too positive for your own good."

"Huh?" there was a degree of indignation in Natalie's puzzled reaction. The cashier laughed loudly, pointing at the actor playing Adrian driving the van back and forth to get the odometer perfectly even. "I just love the guy who does you," she confided in the detective, "He's just got the perfect style. Do you ever give him any tips?"

"He, he does call at the beginning of each taping season and goes over the parts he thinks might give him some problems," Adrian admitted, "But he does really good usually."

"Yep, it's become a tradition for us to roll out the widescreen for you Friday nights," the cashier went on, "And people in here like to watch it; the other week this one guy asked up front if we got your show; he seemed really interested in it."

"Hang on," something was clicking in the back of Adrian's mind, "Tell me exactly when that was?"

"Uh...two weeks ago to the day. Why?"

Adrian thought back over the network schedule, and quickly realized which episode had aired two weeks ago. His eyes went wide as he realized exactly what had been going on. "OOOOOOOhhh!!" he groaned out loud, slapping his hands to his head, "OOOOOhh nooooooo, why, why, why didn't I see it!?"

"Mr. Monk, are you all right!?" Natalie looked at him with deep concern. She waved for Sharona's attention. "Don't have a coronary on us, Adrian!" she demanded as he bent over as if constipated, "Now what's going on!?"

"We've got to get back to the sheriff's office," Adrian looked back and forth between them, "Better, better if you both come, but everyone else stays here."

"Why?" Natalie was confused. Adrian paid no heed. "Agent Eppes, you've got to come with me," he rushed over to the table, "I solved the whole thing. Everyone else, stay here, don't talk to anyone strange, and stay together."

"What's going on?" Jack asked him, but Adrian was already dragging Don and the women out the door. He glanced at his watch as they charged across the street. "The Harveys were put on the transfer wagon to federal prison ten minutes ago," he huffed, swerving to avoid a collission with a Winnebago, "If we hurry we can stop him before he blows them up."

"Who!?" Don was desperate for any piece of information. But Adrian was lost in his own world. It was a mere two minutes later that he burst through the door of the sheriff's office. "Back again?" Gregory asked them from behind his desk, "They've already left, Monk, the case is..."

Adrian flung open the top desk, pushing Gregory's hand aside as he pulled out a remote detonator, already turned on. "You were going to wait until they were well out of town before you blew them up, weren't you?" he told the sheriff accusingly, "So no one would suspect you. You planted the bomb underneath while the federal marshals were getting the paperwork in order."

"No, no, not at all, I don't understand you at all," Gregory tried to look innocent, "This, this must be theirs, I don't know how it got in here."

"I was looking for the most reasonable way al-Waziri could have gotten out of his cell when he escaped," Adrian went on, "And for once it was the simplest answer: you let him out."

"Come, come on Monk, why would I let a maniac like him go?" Gregory stammered nervously.

"Because he and the Harveys were giving you a nice fee to look the other way," Adrian gave him a very harsh glare, "If that ever got out, you'd be ruined for good. And if they talk now, you'll go down with them, so you set them up to be silenced just now. Likewise, we couldn't get too close to the solution. And so Julie had to get shot to get us off your back."

"I, I, I didn't do it!" Gregory whimpered.

"You!" Natalie gave him an absolutely murderous look, "Give me one reason I shouldn't rip you apart!"

"Well, he didn't actually pull the trigger, that's one," Adrian told her, "He just suggested using force; he didn't realize who the target was going to be." His expression became fraught with deep concern as well as indignity as he advanced towards the sheriff, "He's been blackmailing you, hasn't he? He knows you took Tennyson's bribe; he threatened to bring you down with the information."

"Tennyson?" Sharona's expression grew puzzled, "What does he have to do with any of this?"

"Who is Tennyson, anyway?" Don frowned.

"Warwick Tennyson; he built the bomb that killed Trudy," the nurse explained, "We haven't aired the episode dealing with that yet. But he's dead already; I don't see how he fits into this."

"Actually, Lance here knew Warwick all too well," Adrian turned back to the sheriff, "Fifteen years ago, Tennyson was involved in a botched drug deal in Ithaca; I know his file by heart. He killed two undercover cops at the scene and fled. That's where Lance comes in. He was working highway patrol in the city, and pulled him over for going a hundred and thirty miles an hour in a forty mile zone. He had Tennyson dead to rights; several pounds of drugs and the murder weapon right in the car. But Tennyson offered you five thousand dollars to let him go, and you took it, didn't you Lance!? You took it and let him go!!!!"

He slammed a fist down on the table hard, causing Gregory to jump in shock. "A meager five grand was all my wife's life was worth to you in the end!" he roared, tears flowing down his face.

"I...I...come on Monk, be reasonable, how was I supposed to know he would end up building that bomb a couple years later!" Gregory pleaded, "Please, my career, it's very sensitive, I, I can offer you lots of things...!"

"So you think you can just bribe us off!?" Don glared at him, "No no, you're going down for this, Sheriff, no two ways about it."

The door opened behind them. "Don, Turcotte and I solved the code," Charlie was gasping for breath after having had to run to catch up with everyone, "It bigger than..."

"FREEZE!!!" Don leaped on Gregory as he started to go for his gun. The F.B.I. agent ripped the firearm out of the sheriff's hand and trained it on him, "You're not going anywhere, Lance!"

"Now tell us where he is," Adrian bent down and looked the squirming Gregory right in the eye, "Like I said, he came here and blackmailed you with what he knew about you and Tennyson. Phil Seiderbaum overheard you meeting with him in the cemetery, he knew what was going on. You were going to kill him anyway; the Harveys just made your job all that much easier. But when we mentioned the code, you figured he told his wife, so she had to die too, and in the most horrific manner possible. You had said she'd called 9-1-1, but from what I could see, that phone line had been severed long before the call would have come in."

"He did it Monk, not me!" the sheriff begged desperately, "I was just going to try and give her money, he threw himself at her and did...you don't know the guilt I feel...!"

"I'm sure you do, but it doesn't let you off for not stopping him when you had the chance," Adrian's nerves were getting shorter; time was really of the essence, "You had to know what he came here to do; you had to know what he was capable of after the news report of what he did came out the other Christmas. Now tell me Lance, WHERE IS HE NOW!!!!????"

Suddenly the closet door burst open behind them, followed by the clicking of an automatic rifle. "Oh no!!" Adrian groaned, slapping a hand to his face; too late he'd realized the closet door had been ajar. "I should have seen it sooner," he said out loud, "Only one man would have deliberately aimed for Julie knowing what it would do to all of us."

"Well you didn't see it, Monk," sneered the all-too-familiar voice, "Looks like you're not as perfect as you claim. Oh, I've waited so long for this moment."

"Oh dear God, it's not possible!!" Sharona had gone very, very pale, "YOU'RE DEAD!!!!!!!"

"Merry Christmas, Sharona," a very much alive and well Trevor put a cold hand on her shoulder, "Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."


	14. Mr Monk and the Gravest Challenge

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Parents are advised that from this point onward, they may wish to screen content beforehand before allowing younger viewers to read.

* * *

It was the moment Adrian had hoped would never come again. Slowly he turned around to once again face the man who had thrown his whole world into chaos...who had arranged to have his wife abducted and killed to cover up his affair...who had locked the detective in a toxic waste disposal chamber to kill him...who had tried to throw his own son into a watery grave in an act of horrible revenge...and who worst of all had confessed to being part-albeit rather peripherally-in the plot to kill Trudy. It was as if he was in the middle of a bad dream. "Fifteen shots to the back," he mumbled softly in disbelief, "A hundred foot fall into the bay. NO MAN can survive that."

"Two words for you, Monk: bulletproof vest," Trevor told him smugly, "You think I was going up against a group of cops without some protection?"

"It was you," Natalie's voice was barely audible, "You shot my child..."

Trevor ignored her, his cold gaze directed directly at Adrian. "You do remember what your brother said on the bridge the last time we met, Monk?" he asked him.

"About how you took too long to kill us?" Adrian didn't like the way this was going.

"I don't make the same mistake twice," Trevor raised the rifle and fired. Five horrible jolts rocked Adrian's chest. He found himself spiraling to the floor with a loud thump. The world seemed to be blurring, but he still watched as his adversary picked off a fleeing Gregory with another blast. The sheriff landed with a thump next to Adrian, clearly not to get up again. "No, no, I'd put that down if I were you!" Trevor ordered Don, who was raising Gregory's gun at him. He threw open his coat to reveal he had also covered himself in dynamite. Don hastily lowered the gun. "So you think hanging around with Monk makes you a real lawman, huh?" their opponent taunted them.

"So what?" Don demanded.

"So what? So sorry, but that means you've been tainted by Sharona's poison. You can't be allowed to survive," Trevor fired again. "DOOOOONNN!" Charlie's scream echoed through the room at the sight of his brother falling. He rushed forward towards him, only to take a blast of his own and crumple into a heap. Trevor stared at his actions and abruptly let out a loud, humorless laugh that sent a chill down Adrian's spine. He then became aware of his wife's presence again. "Dear Sharona, do you want to play with me?" he asked her coldly. She made no attempt to run, which Adrian supposed was due to shock, given that she was used to the spineless, blathering Trevor she had dealt with in the past, not the gun-toting maniac before her now who from the look in his eye was clearly not all there. "Why don't we play a little game?" he continued, drawing an aluminum bat from under his coat, "Let's pretend it's the bottom of the ninth, and you're all they've got. Here's the pitch," he raised the bat high and brought it down hard, "Strike one, strike two, strike three, strike four, strike five...!"

"LEAVE HER ALONE!" Natalie rushed him and seized the bat. In a flash Trevor spun her around and lifted her up over his head. "He's headed for home!" he shouted to no one in particular, "Here's the throw to the plate!" He flung her hard into the wall. "Out! And the crowd goes wild as he celebrates!"

He punctuated all this by leaping high in the air and landing hard on her ribs. Adrian grimaced from the natural effect of this. He knew he had to do something, anything, quickly. "Come on, Trevor, you know you don't want to do this!" he begged out loud, dragging himself across the floor towards the alarm button under the desk, "You're not really this person, I know it! Now please, put down the gun and explosives and tell us where Becky is!"

He reached for the button, but Trevor pulled him back and planted a foot on his chest. "No substitutions, Monk, like you said last time, it's just you and me," he told the detective firmly. His gaze fell back to his wife cowering on the floor. "Was that a tear? Are you crying? You can't cry, Sharona. There's no crying at Christmas. DO YOU KNOW THAT!?"

His hands shot forward and seized her throat. "It's all your fault, you know!" his voice grew much darker, "You brought it on everyone with your filthy crusade of hate against me!"

"Stop...please!" her face was turning blue already.

"Oh you want me to stop!?" he bellowed in carnal rage, "You sure as hell didn't stop! I've seen what you've put on the air about me! I saw that episode, and it was the biggest pack of lies I ever heard in my life!"

"But your uncle...Detroit..."

"That's not the point at all!" he roared, shaking her now as well, "You made a promise to me that we'd start over again, and you broke it the moment the words left your lips! You never had any intention of going with me; you just wanted to set me up so you could humiliate me and get your usual sick sense of satisfaction against me! And then on top of that, you have to go make me look like a monster to the whole country! Well, you and I know who the real monster is! And your time's come at last, I'm happy to say."

"What will Benjy say...!?" she was grasping at straws to save herself.

"Do you think I care anymore!?" he bellowed right in her face, "He can't think straight anymore anyway, not since you poisoned his mind with your lies! Now, thanks to you, I have to destroy him too! And then, I have to destroy everyone else you've poisoned for their own good. At least it'll be so much fun to tear you down just like you've tried to tear me down."

"By killing her?" Natalie's voice was filled with terrible pain from what he'd done to her, "You thinking killing her's really going to make everything better!?"

Trevor let out another spine-chilling laugh. "You think I would feel killing her would bring any resolution?" he told her. He rounded on a quivering Sharona and whispered darkly, "No, just killing you wouldn't be enough anymore. You'll have to suffer like you've made me suffer. And suffer you most certainly will. Oh yes, tonight you're going to find out what always happens to filthy, degenerate, lowlife little (he called her something so horribly degrading that Adrian felt he needed to take a shower just hearing it) like you. And you're going to wish I had killed you right away. Tis the season to be afraid. Very, very afraid."

He picked her up and smashed her head into the desk hard enough that Adrian could feel the impact where he lay. Apparently convinced he'd caused his wife enough suffering for the moment, Trevor stormed over to Natalie and seized her cell phone from her purse. "Dial the others," he ordered, tossing it at her, "Tell them to meet us in five minutes."

"I'm begging you, please leave my daughter out of this!" she pleaded, "She's done nothing to hurt you!"

She received a sharp kick to the windpipe. "Hey I'm doing her a favor!" Trevor roared at her, "I'm going to let her be with dear daddy again! Now dial, damn it!"

Natalie reluctantly complied. Trevor hauled a dazed Adrian to his feet. "Unfortunately, you're not invited to this party, Monk," he told him curtly, "Just like old times, huh? So if we don't meet again, happy New Year."

And with that, he brought the rifle handle down hard on Adrian's skull, and everything blacked out.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, he was lying in a grassy field, and there was a bright glow everywhere. "No, no, not now!" he whimpered out loud, feeling for a pulse that didn't seem to be there.

"It's all right, Adrian," Trudy was standing behind him.

"No it's not!" he cried out loud, "I've got to do something, you've got to send me back, something, anything...!"

He put his face in his hands. "It's my fault, really," he lamented, "I spent all that time building him up as an animal, and now that I actually forgive him and see his good side, he's gone over the edge."

"Now you know you didn't cause this," Trudy put a hand on his shoulder, "He's chosen his own path. You have to concentrate on what you have to do to keep him from doing the things he wants, Adrian."

"I can't do anything dead!" he shrieked in frustration, plucking several flowers in a clump that were taller than the others, "If only there could be some way I could...can you get into his soul? If we can talk reason to his soul, maybe we'll..."

"We don't have that power Adrian," she shook her head, "But there's still much for you to do. Just remember there's always the bright side of the moon."

"Huh?" Adrian frowned.

"Find the bright side of the moon, Adrian. Adrian?" Trudy was growing more quizzical in expression, "Mr. Monk, are you there?" She reached forward and touched his chest, giving him a sharp shocking feeling...

* * *

And then he opened his eyes to find himself staring at the ceiling of an ambulance going very fast. "Clear!" shouted the paramedic holding a pair of defibrillators above him. The detective jerked upwards. "Please sir, stay calm, we're almost at the hospital," the paramedic tried to push him back down.

"How much time's gone by!?" Adrian asked desperately. There was another groan as a figure on the gurney next to him stirred: Charlie. "Don..." the mathematician moaned trying to rise up.

"Just relax, you two," recommended the officer in the front seat of the ambulance, "You should count yourselves lucky you weren't hurt more seriously."

"You've got to turn around now, we've got to go back," Adrian stammered, leaping to his feet again.

"No can do, you need surgery if you want to go back," the officer rebuffed him, "Now please relax, or..."

Adrian noticed the officer's gun hanging from its holster. Desperate times called for desperate measures. In a flash he grabbed it and aimed it at the driver's temple. "I SAID," he bellowed at the top of his lungs, "TURN THIS AMBULANCE AROUND RIGHT NOW!"

The driver slammed on the brakes. "He's crazy!" he yelped, diving out the door. The officer and paramedic did the same when Adrian pointed the gun at them. Adrian slumped into the passenger's seat; loss of blood from the shots had definitely weakened him. He flung the gun into the back of the ambulance, have no intention to further use it despite the circumstances. "Can you drive?" he asked Charlie.

"I think so," with a loud gasp of pain, Charlie slid into the driver's seat and reversed the ambulance. He looked very panicked. "Do you suppose he...?"

"There's no way of knowing," Adrian said solemnly. He glanced at the dashboard clock: 10:51. "We were out for over three hours; he could have done any number of things to them by now, even killed them if he was in a mad enough mood."

"I was going to reveal it was him before everything got out of hand," Charlie extended the code paper, "Turcotte and I figured it out."

Adrian looked over the message, which decoded read: ADRIAN MONK, TREVOR FLEMING IS ALIVE AND WANTS TO KILL YOU. I SAW HIM CONSPIRING WITH SHERIFF GREGORY IN THE NATIONAL CEMETERY. PLEASE TAKE WHATEVER PRECAUTIONS YOU NEED TO PREVENT A TRAGEDY. "It all makes sense now," the detective whispered softly, "He must have been listening in on Sharona's phone calls all that time since he crawled out of the bay. Since he think's Benjy's a robot in his mother's hands, Becky would naturally be the first strike against her. So he drove into Summit and kidnapped her after the Harveys took her father. I had a little trouble putting the order together, but the Harveys came first and took John, leaving the mess behind. Becky came home, found the mess, and Trevor jumped her, then shot the highway patrol officer on his escape. Lord known what he's done to her since then. Meanwhile, that's how Phil Seiderbaum knew to mail the code to the motel, he figured my father would forward it right to me."

"Yeah, it all makes sense," Charlie mumbled. He looked lost in another world. "Can't let Don down, we just can't."

"Well, if we don't know anything about how...Tape," Adrian had noticed one in a plastic bag nearby. He dug it out (wishing he had wipes to use on it) and hit play, not entirely sure he wanted to hear what was on it. "Good evening, Monk," came Trevor's icy voice from the other end, sounding if possible even more deranged than before, "If you're listening to this, I should have put more bullets into you. Too bad. But no matter, everyone else is here with me now, and we're having so much fun, aren't we?"

The most horrible scream imaginable cut through the air. Adrian turned his head away; he didn't want to know what had been going on at the time or who it was being done to. "Stop it!" Don's voice came in over the tape, "Or I'll...!"

He let out a cry of his own. "Much better," Trevor stated next, "I should probably exterminate them all now, Monk," he continued, "But because I'm a nice guy, I'm going to give you a sporting chance. If you can find them all by midnight., they can live. Otherwise, you'll have more burdens on your soul knowing you let more people die you could have saved. The wounded general can tell you where to look first, but that's all the help you get. Better hurry, you wouldn't want to miss the party. It's a real killer."

He let out another cold laugh, which was followed by more terrible screaming as the tape clicked to an end. Adrian glanced at the dashboard clock; three more agonizing minutes had elapsed towards doomsday. The road sign they were passing told him they were thirty-one miles from Gettysburg. He shook his head sadly. "None of it makes any sense," he admitted, "Why he would go so insane? He'd done what he'd set out to do; he'd gotten his family back. Why would he just turn on them like he has now that he got them back?"

"That's one area I can't help you, Monk," Charlie retched again, swerving over into the other lane. "'The wounded general will tell you where to look first.' I think I know it, where...?"

"It's equestrian statue code," Adrian snapped his fingers, "The number of the horse's legs on the pedestal is supposed to tell the rider's fate: all four legs on means he survived, one leg off means he was wounded, two legs off means he was killed. Well, it's just an urban legend, really, but all the equestrian statues here fit the code. And there's only one wounded general statue..."

"Winfield Scott Hancock on Baltimore Pike," Charlie realized it as well. He gunned the engine. "But not, not too fast!" Adrian gripped the door handle.

"I know how you feel, honestly, Monk, but I can't lose my brother," Charlie gave him a firm look, "Don's always been there to stand up for me, now it's time I repay the favor for him and..."

Just then his cell phone rang. "Charlie, please tell me what the hell's going on!" his father's voice echoed in from the other end.

"You're all right, Dad?" his son asked him.

"Unless you mean freezing my rear off standing in a deserted street with a foot of snow coming, of course I'm all right," the city planner said, "I've been worried sick about you guys; I went the bathroom, and when I came out everyone had left. I asked..."

"It's, it's a long story, Mr. Eppes," Adrian fiddled with the ambulance's heater, "Basically, Don's in trouble with everyone else, you probably won't see him again in one piece if we fail."

Charlie gave him a strained look. "Just get to a safe location, Dad," he instructed Alan, "Then lock the doors and call the state police and National Guard. And pray for us."

He hung up before his father could answer to any of it. He flipped the code paper over and began writing trigonomical equations on it. "Please, please, please watch the road!" Adrian screamed at him.

"Sorry, sorry," the mathematician finished writing and looked straight ahead into the blinding snowstorm, which seemed to be gaining speed, "Since he thankfully didn't get my father, that means we've got an hour and three minutes to save the lives of ten people, including my brother and Becky. Now, we know the starting point is here," keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he drew a rough diagram of the battlefield and town, and drew a large circle at the site of Hancock's statue, "I'm assuming he's going to divide his prisoners up evenly and then arrange them, whether consciously or not, in a geometric pattern, with Hancock's statue as a prime end site equilateral to the others."

"Why?" Adrian was confused.

"All human minds aim for peace and harmony, Monk, not just your own," Charlie told him.

"But this isn't a normal mind we're dealing with," Adrian lamented, "How do you rationalize with a person who is genuinely insane? None of what he does could fit into any mathematical pattern you can come up with."

"Well it's the chance we've got to take," Charlie mumbled grimly, gunning the ambulance harder still, "Otherwise every else we care for won't live to see the light of day."


	15. A Race Against Time

"Left here, left here, left here!" Adrian gestured at the turnoff to the Baltimore Pike.

"I see it, I see it, I see it!" Charlie spun the wheel hard to the left. The ambulance skidded sideways on the icy road, but managed to right itself in time. Adrian glanced worriedly at the clock. Just forty-one minutes were left, and the snow was coming down harder than ever, much more than what had been forecast. "There's Hancock, right over that ridge," he pointed ahead, even though the visibility on the road was almost nonexistent due to the storm.

Charlie braked to a stop in the middle of the road and leaped out. "Don!?" he called out into the maelstrom, running haphazardly into snowdrifts that were almost up to his knees, "What are we looking for, Monk?"

"Not looking for; found," Adrian had spotted the figure against the tree to the left of Hancock's statue. His heart in his throat, he rushed forward, being sure to step only in the prints Charlie was leaving in front of him. It was Disher, shot once in the chest and looking blue given that he had been left stark naked, but still alive. Adrian averted his eyes from the sight, only to shiver at the words Trevor had carved into the tree above his victim: CRAZY ANTHONY WAS HERE. SO END ALL FRIENDS OF PIG MONK. "Lieutenant, it's me, Monk," he said breathlessly as Charlie released him from the tree, trying his best not to look right at him, "If you know where anyone else is, tell me, we're running out of time."

"I didn't get that," Charlie leaned closer to him. Disher's lips were moving very slowly. "Tr...Trav...Trav..." he whispered softly.

"Traveller?" Adrian inquired. The lieutenant managed a faint nod. "Robert E. Lee's horse; the Virginia Memorial on Seminary Ridge," the detective realized, "Let's get him inside somewhere, quick."

"There's a Best Western right down the street," Charlie helped Disher towards the ambulance and wrapped a spare blanket in the back around him, "Just take nice even breaths, Lieutenant, it's going to be all right."

He climbed back into the driver's seat and turned the key...but the engine wouldn't start. "No, no, no!" he shouted, kicking it, "Now what are we going to do; the buses and cabs won't be running in this mess!"

"Wait a minute, my father's shuttle, it may still be at the restaurant," Adrian realized, "It's going to use up our time, and if he didn't leave the key in it, we're still sunk, but it's worth a try. You get him to safety, I'll swing back if it works."

"I'll try and figure out which pattern we're dealing with here once he's safe," Charlie dragged the blanket-clad Disher up the pike. Adrian charged across the street and cut through a small section of stores that he knew would be a shortcut. He was tempted to knock on the door of one that was still open and point out that the candles in the Advent wreath in the window were uneven, but for once he knew he couldn't and suppressed it. He leaped out of the way of a snowplow crossing the next street and charged headlong up Steinwehr Avenue towards the buffet. Sure enough, his father's shuttle was still parked out front, and in a very fortuitous break, the keys were indeed lying on the seat. Unfortunately, Jack had completely locked the van up, as Adrian found when he tugged on every single door knob. Sighing at what he had to do, he hefted a rock and tossed it through the passenger window, then reached down and unlocked the shuttle. He fumbled with the keys for a minute before he got them in the ignition and revved the van up. It had been so long since he'd driven, which became obvious as he braked to a stop every five feet. He glanced at the shuttle's clock: down to thirty-two minutes...

Charlie was standing right by the curb outside the Best Western. "He'll be all right, they'll get the hotel medic to look at him," he reassured the detective as he climbed back it, "I think we're dealing with a rhomboidal pattern here, maybe a trapezoid or a rectangle," he held up the map, with a line drawn between Hancock's statue and the Virginia Memorial, "Once we find whoever's there, we'll probably have to go north if we find out...where are you going now!?"

Adrian couldn't suppress the urge to fix what he saw the children in the front yard of the house next to the hotel doing. "Wait, wait, wait, you've got that snowman all wrong there!" he ran up, waving his arms like a windmill, "You didn't pack the snowballs tight enough; the edges are too rough!"

"What do you think you're doing!?" the oldest girl demanded as he scraped away at the excess snow on the snowman with his file, "You're that lunatic cop from TV, aren't you?"

"That's, that's me, but I'm, I'm not actually a cop at the moment, I'm still on unpaid leave, if you have any idea what that means," Adrian scraped too hard and collapsed half of the snowman's face, "I'm, I'm also one of Santa's little helpers, and I'll tell him to withhold the presents if you can't do this evenly."

Charlie blew the shuttle horn impatiently. Adrian snapped back to reality. "Keep, just keep evening it out," he informed the youngsters as he ran back to the van. A long and bumpy ride out of town followed, and even though Charlie went as fast as the road would allow, the time was down to twenty-eight minutes when they reached the Virginia Memorial. Despite the pitch darkness, Adrian could still make out a familiar figure hunched over behind Lee on top of Traveller's back. "Captain?" he hesitantly called up.

"Monk!" Stottlemeyer sounded rather hyper, "Monk, get the hell up here, he put a live one on me!"

"Uh," Adrian stared hesitantly up at the statue, at least twenty feet above him, "You, you can't come down here?"

"He cuffed me to the damn statue, Monk, now do something, quick!"

"Coming," Charlie rummaged through the glove compartment and found a pair of pliers. He rushed forward and scrambled up the side of the monument, no easy task given the smoothness of the sides. Soon he'd reached the top. "Let's see," the mathematician examined each and every wire, "Probability would indicate it should be..."

"FORGET PROBABILITY!" Stottlemeyer's voice was about nine octaves higher than normal, "JUST..DISARM...THE DAMN...BOMB...NOW!"

Charlie shrugged, nodded, and cut the middle wire. The bomb clicked off with a rattle with a little over a minute to go. Stottlemeyer breathed a huge sigh of relief. "I can't believe it's him, Monk," he mumbled once he and Charlie had climbed back down to the ground, "Every bit of evidence said it was him we found in the bay."

"But like you said, Captain, the tests weren't complete yet," Adrian shook his head, "You wouldn't happen to know where he's put everyone else by chance?"

He gave me this the moment I walked in the station door," Stottlemeyer pointed to a large bruise on his head, "When I woke up, I was up there. So your guess would be as good as mine."

"And we don't have forever," Adrian's watch now read twenty-eight minutes to go. "Head north?" he asked Charlie.

"It makes sense," Charlie rushed back to the shuttle, "And if my guess is right, we should look..."

* * *

"Right there, the snow's not as deep," Adrian pointed to an area just to the right of the Eternal Light Peace Memorial on Oak Ridge, "Good thinking there."

He piled out of the shuttle, reluctantly going right through the intact snow banks. "Hello there?" he called out, scraping away at the snow in the depression, "Dad, is that...EEEEEAAIIIICCKK!"

His father had been locked inside a glass case that was filled with snakes. Adrian retched and turned away. "It's over, he's, he's a goner, but at least we got some time with..." he lamented to his associates as they joined him.

"Shhh, he's saying something, Monk," Stottlemeyer leaned close to the case, where Jack was clearly mouthing, "They're all dead." The captain brought his foot down on the case, shattering the glass. "Thanks, I needed that," Jack took deep breaths as he rose back up, "You can look now, Adrian, they're all dead. I guess he forgot they're cold blooded."

"My question would be, where did he get them?" Charlie had to ask, drawing on the map again, "Did he just happen to have them lying around in case we came?"

"Trevor's been presumed dead for two years; he could have done anything in that time," Adrian evened out the snow with his file again, "I see the pattern he's working on here; in order to save everyone, I have to face a fear: nudity, heights, snakes. That's why I wish it wasn't him; he knows every one of my weaknesses and how to exploit them."

"And you said you dreamed this guy was a saint the other night?" Jack inquired.

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, just that I'd hate to be the guy who'd have to write a story that tries to reconcile that world with this one, because it'll be one hell of a continuity mishmash," the hotelier commented, "Did you find Ambrose yet?"

"No, and we're down to..." Adrian checked the dashboard, "Nineteen minutes now."

"I think I've got it," Charlie announced. He held up the map for everyone to see, "He chose a parallelogram, whether consciously or not. We're now at the upper left corner of the parallelogram, which means we should go..." he drew a line from their current location down to a point parallel to where they'd found Stottlemeyer, then connected this two points, forming a basic parallelogram on the map, "..right about here. Which appears to be..."

"It's Jack's Mountain Covered Bridge out in Fairfield," Adrian realized; he'd seen brochures for a covered bridge tour of the county back at the main visitors' center, "That's a good eight miles from here," he slapped his hand to his face, "You're right, he's making it virtually impossible for us to save everyone. We won't nearly have enough time..."

"Well we've got to try; give me the keys," Jack gestured for Charlie to give him them and rushed to the shuttle's driver's seat, "I'm not losing either of my sons tonight no matter what else happens."

* * *

"Come on baby, just a little more!" the hotelier pleaded the shuttle, which was just about out of gas. "You don't bother checking the tank before you go anywhere, Dad!?" Adrian asked him firmly.

"I've rarely been out this way, Adrian, how was I supposed to know there wouldn't be any stations around here!?" his father pointed out. Unfortunately, it was this moment the engine sputtered to a stop. The shuttle drifted off the road into a ditch. "Now what!?" Stottlemeyer groaned, slamming the dashboard in frustration.

"We're almost there," Adrian recognized a sign just up the road demarking the bridge as being a mere half mile away. The detective took off running hard. Visibility was almost zero with the snow whipping around harder than ever, and he was feeling lightheaded from the gunshot wounds, but he willed himself to keep going. Soon the outline of the bridge came into sight, and with it the sounds of two people calling for help, one familiar and one not. Adrian skidded to a halt at the edge of the wingwall. "Ambrose?" he called out, "How, how are you?"

"Oh wonderful. I need this like I need a dozen holes in my head!" Ambrose lamented, chained to the bridge's underside, "I hate to put it strongly, but the fact of the matter is we're both wired up here, and I'm not sure if you'll be able to do much about it with..."

"Mr. Monk, three minutes, please hurry!" came the second voice, which Adrian knew had to be Becky's. He squinted hard at the two of them. Something didn't appear to be right. The beam of his father's flashlight coming up behind him revealed it all; the two of them were surrounded by hypodermic needles with their business ends up. "Come on, Trevor, why you have to go this far!?" he lamented out loud as everyone joined him. Nonetheless, he knew what he had to do. "Would it be the same wire as with the captain?" he asked Charlie.

"It looks like the same design," the mathematician glanced at the bombs in the beam of the light. Adrian seized the pliers and reluctantly slid underneath the bridge. "Hang on, Ambrose, I'm coming," Jack slid in behind him. "Don't, Dad, if something goes wrong...!" Adrian tried to dissuade him.

"I'm not abandoning my boy," his father said firmly, "Just stay calm Ambrose, you'll be all right," he called to his older son.

"It's the green wire, Dad, I'm familiar with the schematics of this type of explosive device," Ambrose iterated, "Hers is the blue one, Adrian."

"And you're absolutely sure, Ambrose?" Adrian almost lost his grip on the underboards, but managed to right himself before sliding into the creek.

"Have I ever steered you wrong yet, Adrian?" Ambrose's voice got a little higher, likely because the bombs were now down to about ninety seconds. Adrian figured there was nothing to lose. "Just, just try and relax," he told an anything but relaxed Becky as he got closer to her.

"Hurry, please!" her eyes were very wide. Adrian looked around for the blue wire. Unfortunately, it was underneath a forest of needles. Adrian's eyes squinted shut in discomfort. He hesitantly reached forward with the pliers. The bomb started beeping; no more than forty seconds at most. "Please be the right one," he thought to himself, edging the pliers around a wire. He snapped them shut...and was relieved to hear it click off. "Catch, Dad," he tossed them at Jack. Jack, however, had not been paying attention, and was conked in the head by the pliers, which tumbled into the stream below. The hotelier let go of the underboards in a flash and splashed about in the creek. "Got them!" he called out, scrambling as fast as he could back up the bank.

"Uh, twenty seconds," Ambrose glanced nervously at the bomb on his chest.

"I'm coming, Son," Jack swung across the planks like a man possessed. He yanked a set of needles away and cut hard. The bomb clicked off with just four seconds left. The two of them glanced at the disabled bomb and laughed loudly. Adrian breathed a huge sigh of relief himself. "You, you all right?" he asked Becky, inserting his file into the locks holding her in place.

Becky let out a loud burst of grief. Adrian got a good look at her as he carried her out from under the bridge and shivered to see that Trevor had put her through much the same as he'd put Mrs. Seiderbaum through in the last moments of her life; she clearly hadn't eaten in several days. "He told me if I even breathed, he'd kill me with his bare hands!" she sobbed, "I spent every waking moment thinking it was going to be the last...oh God...!"

She buried her face in his chest, which made Adrian rather uncomfortable. "I came home late that night; something happened to my father," she went on, "Did he...!?"

"Your, your father's all right, actually, it's, it's a long story," the detective explained to her, "It's Benjy I'm worried about now, if we can't find him..."

"I understand now why he was uncomfortable talking about his father," she told him, "Now that I know what he's capable of...but there were times he didn't seem he wanted to...I mean, he was talking to himself sometimes, asking why he was doing it all..."

"Really?" Adrian's face unexpectedly brightened. He drew a coin from his pocket and flipped it several times for seemingly no reason. "I get it now," he whispered, "HE doesn't want to do this, the other him does. All we have to do is figure out where he is, maybe I'll be able to talk reason to him after all."

"I think I know where he took the others," Ambrose emerged from under the bridge with his father, "He mentioned that if you're going to stop him this time, Adrian, you'll have to go back where you met him before, at least that's what he told Natalie when she begged to know what was coming for her," his face contorted at the thought of Natalie in severe danger,

"Did she look all right?" Adrian asked; he was quite worried how he'd carry on if he had neither assistant to fall back on after the holiday.

"That would depend on what you mean by all right," Ambrose said with his own shiver, "If you mean in one piece, yes, other than that, I wouldn't think so. After he put me down there under the bridge, they tried to get away. You don't want to know how he ended that attempt."

Adrian was sure he didn't. "Agent Eppes?" he asked, noticing Charlie's continued worried expression for his brother's safety.

"Weakening but still alive; I don't think Trevor really cares much what happens to him," the instruction manual writer said.

"Well I do," the mathematician stepped forward, "You said you knew...?"

"Oh yeah, well, like I said, Trevor said to go back to where Adrian met him before, and since the last time we crossed paths with him was on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, he's probably at the highest point on the battlefield, which would have to be..."

"The observation tower on the middle of Seminary Ridge," Charlie finished it for him. He held up the map and connected the lines from all the ends of the parallelogram, showing that the tower was in the exact middle, "It fits the pattern perfectly."

"But the time..." Adrian glanced at his watch. "Six minutes till midnight," he moaned sadly, "There's no way we can get there on time with the shuttle out of gas, none. It's over. He's, he's won. Everyone else is as good as dead."


	16. Mr Monk and the Man with Two Faces

There was a grim silence on the road as everyone took this disheartening piece of news in. Adrian lowered his head. Both women had done so much for him, and now he couldn't do the most important thing of all for them. At least he'd have the memories...

"Say wait a minute, are those tire tracks over there?" Jack pointed towards a low building in an open space on the other side of the bridge. Adrian's head jerked up. "You're right," he murmured, taking note that the building was a hang glider storage facility next to an open airfield, now closed for the season, "It looks like they're a little old, though, the snow's filled it in somewhat. Like..."

A thought occurred to him. "This must be where the Harveys dumped the weapons they stole," he realized, joining everyone in a rush over to the building.

"Looks like a small ICBM stage in there..." Charlie peered in through the window. A sudden hopeful look spread on his face. He took his marker and began writing an equation on the side of the building. "Don't, don't, that ruins it!" Adrian protested.

"We still might be able to save everyone," the mathematician said firmly, examining the end result, "We've got to hurry though."

He erased the equation with his sleeve-not quite how Adrian would have hoped he'd do so. "And how do you propose we do that?" Jack had to know.

"You know what happens when you take a cold tablet," Charlie related to him, "When it first enters your system, it releases a large burst of medicine to bring you immediate relief to your symptoms. Then it slows down and releases the medicine a little bit at a time, like a dropper."

"I see what you're saying," Ambrose's expression was brightening, "Assuming the ICBM's in working order, and we can hook it up properly to a functioning hang glider, we might be able to do much the same. A quick blast to get us in the air, then let the wind take us to the tower."

"Aren't you geniuses forgetting a couple of major problems with that theory?" Stottlemeyer had to point out, "Namely that there's a blizzard going on out here and you'll never stay aloft long enough even with a big rocket on your backs. And that there'd be no way of knowing which way the tower is in this mess?"

"It's roughly that way," Adrian pointed to the west, grimacing as he brushed against the heavily rusted perimeter fence, "I, I do wonder, though, the fuel has to be just right; too little and we'll fall well short, too much and we'll overshoot."

"I know, and there's not enough time to recompute for any other factors," Charlie admitted, "We'll just have to hope everything works exactly right."

They entered the hangar to find it packed with munitions and weapons. The ICBM stage was in the corner, luckily facing to the west. "Find some rope and an intact glider, bring it on over here and latch it up, we've only got five minutes left," Charlie instructed the others. He examined the stage carefully. "Seems structurally sound," he remarked, "It's probably heavy enough to only allow two people to go along, though."

"So I guess it's you and me from here on," Adrian was taking grenades out of the nearest box and arranging them in rows of ten each. The last one ended up with seven grenades. With a sigh, he pulled the pin on one and tossed it towards the window, only to miss and have it smack off the wall and roll towards a stack of boxes. The others saw it coming and jumped for cover as it went off, sending debris flying. "MONK!" Stottlemeyer glared at him.

"Uh, oops," Adrian forced a sheepish grin, "Better, better go clean it up before we go."

"No time. That's it, bring it over here," Charlie waved for everyone to push over a hang glider, "Now, we need a ramp of at least forty-five degrees for liftoff."

"I don't know what in God's name you're talking about," the captain rolled his eyes at mathematic principles beyond his comprehension.

"I think I do," Becky gathered up a group of boxes of various heights and a long pole, "Math always has been my best subject. Is this good?"

Charlie nodded at the makeshift ramp. "That should do the trick just fine," he admitted, "Let's get this hooked up then."

Time ticked agonizing onward. There was only two and a half minutes left until midnight when the missile stage was attached to the hang glider on the ramp, pointed towards a hole in the ceiling. Adrian gulped as he slid onto the back seat of the glider. A large part of him wanted to forget the whole thing. "You, you are absolutely sure this will work?" he had to ask Charlie hesitantly.

"On a scale of one to ten? I'd say about an eight, rounded off," his associate admitted.

"Good, nice, nice even number," Adrian nodded, not really all that at ease. "Every, everyone step back," he told the others, who didn't need a hint to scramble out of the way, "Captain, punch the start in ten seconds."

"I think this is plain suicide, Monk," the captain was shaking his head, but he nevertheless slipped an iron fuel barrel over his head and approached the back of the rocket, "Nice knowing you in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five,..."

"Wait, wait, hold it, I changed my mind, I don't want to do it!" the detective scrambled with his seatbelt, but found it stuck. Stottlemeyer continued counting nonetheless, "...four, three, two, one, goodbye Monk."

He reached for the button. It was just as he pressed it, however, that Jack unexpectedly leaped forward onto the glider. "Dad, what are...!" Adrian shout was lost in a deafening blast as the rocket ignited and sent them flying through the hole in the roof. Stottlemeyer jumped to the floor, letting the barrel completely cover him and protect him from the flames. "What the hell is he doing!?" he yelled once it was safe to get out and run away from the flames, "Does he really want to get killed that badly too!?"

"I have no idea, honestly," Ambrose's brow furled, "But I hope it doesn't affect them too badly; Professor Eppes's calculations were clearly predicated on a two-man crew; this could throw them off by a couple of miles."

"Well, at least the snow'll cushion their fall when they fall," the captain reached for his cell, "At any rate, better call the cops and let them know where they're going."

Meanwhile, on the careening glider, Adrian blindly reached out to pull his father on board. "Why are you here, Dad!?" he demanded, fighting the temptation to open his eyes.

"If this doesn't work, I want the honor of having gone out with you," Jack shouted to be heard over the rocket, "Besides, now that I know more things about life and parenting, I might be able to help you get through to this guy. Are you sure we're still going in the right direction, Professor?"

"I think so," Charlie shouted, although he to had to squint to avoid snow blindness from the blizzard, which reduced visibility to practically nothing, "We should be lined up properly for..."

It was then the rocket suddenly started sputtering. Adrian emitted a very high shriek. "Not out of gas already!" he lamented. The glider took a noticeable dip downwards. "No wait, I think it's all right," Charlie shouted back, "We made four miles in thirty seconds, the wind's behind us, we can glide down if we're lucky and..."

There was a soft blast as the last gasp of fuel misfired in the engine, causing a small explosion. "Uh, I think you'll have to rethink your formula, Professor," Jack gulped as a spark flew right into the glider's sail, immediately starting a raging fire. The glider went into a sickening nosedive. Adrian screamed again. This was not how he'd hoped to go out.

Abruptly, though, he felt the glider straighten out. And on top of that, they seemed to be going faster as well. Surprised, he dared to open his eyes, and was amazed to see the flickering outline of a Navy plane off the starboard side. Behind the stick, Mitch turned towards the detective and gave him a thumbs-up. "What's going on?" Charlie was completely confused in front of the glider, "How are we staying up? We've got no more lift potential!"

"Never, never mind that, just, just keep going, Professor," Adrian called. He shut his eyes again, glad to know they were going to have help getting to their target.

"Hang on, I think I see the tower now," Jack called out. Adrian opened his eyes again to see a shadowy bulk directly below them. They'd made it just in time, with only a minute and twenty seconds left on his watch. It was at this moment that Mitch banked away-and the glider plunged right towards the top of the tower. "Well thanks a lot!" Adrian screamed back at the now empty sky behind him. He braced himself hard for the inevitable crash, which sent him flopping across the tower's top deck. He managed to break his slide against the railing before he went over the edge, freezing up at the sight of the hundred foot drop below him that likely would have been instantly fatal. "That was too close," he groaned out loud, clutching his now sore ribs.

Suddenly the barrel of an all-too-familiar rifle jammed into his back. "You shouldn't have tried to be the hero again, Monk," Trevor's voice growled darkly in his ear, "Get up."

Adrian slowly complied. "I'm not armed," he said, raising his hands in the air. The sounds of loud sobs caused him to glance to the left to see the others. He had to immediately look away; it was all the clear his adversary had put his assistants through Hell several times over and succeeded in breaking them both in body and spirit. Now they and their children stood on a flimsy wooden platform over the edge of the tower, handcuffed and ready to be hanged. "How could you even contemplate going this far?" he murmured softly.

"Walk," Trevor jammed the rifle against his back, "We're going to do a new episode for your big important show: Mr. Monk Gets the Living Hell Shot Out of Him."

Adrian hesitantly approached the platform. He took note that the children had mercifully been spared what their mothers had gone through, although it had clearly not been easy for them either, and he guessed that they probably now had other scars that would never heal. In the middle of the platform, shot another time and readied to take the plunge himself, but otherwise much better off, was Don. "How'd you get up here, Monk?" he was surprised.

"It's, it's a long story," the detective stared at the sky to avoid the vertigo inducing view down, "Your brother deserves the credit, really." He turned to the right and patted a clearly disheartened and disillusioned Benjy on the head. "Becky's all right, she's going to be just fine," he said reassuringly.

"But you won't be. On your knees, freak," Trevor shoved him down and planted the rifle against the back of his head, "Don't worry about everyone else; you get to go first. This is your punishment for not minding your own business; if you'd just taken my warnings in Chicago, I wouldn't have had to go this far."

"I know you're not this person," the detective tried one last bit of tact, taking note of the keys dangling from Trevor's belt, "You know there's no return if you go ahead with this, don't you?"

"Goodbye, Monk," his opponent started to squeeze the trigger, but a large swath of snow suddenly walloped him in the face. Jack jumped on top of him and strained to hold him down. "Go on, get them out of here, I'll hold him off!" he shouted to his son.

"The keys, Dad, give me the keys!" Adrian gestured for them. Jack reached for them and tossed them towards Adrian, but his aim was off and the keys sailed over the side of the tower. The detective rolled his eyes. "I meant hand them to me!" he whined.

"You didn't specify..." Jack was cut off as he was pushed hard by his adversary towards Adrian. The two of them tumbled over the side of the railing. Adrian screamed again, fearing the end was at hand...

But a hand caught them in mid-fall. "Don...!?" Charlie had apparently rolled down the stairs in the crash and had been on the level below the top deck since then.

"Much better than I'd thought," Adrian scrambled to safety, "But he won't be if we..."

"Time's up, Monk, it's midnight!" came Trevor's almost mocking call from the level above, "Say goodbye to your dear friends."

"No, please, I'm begging you, stop!" Natalie cried out in desperation. Adrian looked up. There was no real time to think. He barreled as hard as he could up the stairs to the top, burst through the door, and threw himself into a slide across the deck. The thick layer of ice on it gave him enough speed to reach the lever to the platform just as Trevor was starting to throw it. The detective grabbed the lever and strained as hard as he could to pull it back. "Just listen to me, please...!" he whimpered loudly.

"You still don't get it, do you Monk; SHE'S the villain here, not me!" his foe pointed at his broken and bleeding wife, "She's manipulated and betrayed me since the day I met her, just like she manipulated and betrayed you! She conspired to keep me from my son and turn me into a monster! You've seen what she's done to me over the years; she deserves this and so much more!"

"You know that's not true, deep down you know it's not!" Adrian was losing the battle, but he kept pulling for all it was worth, "No one else needs to get hurt here if you'll just hear me out on this!"

The lever jerked back and forth, rattling the platform ominously. Everyone on it gulped loudly, anticipating the plunge that would come. Then without warning, the lever cracked clean in two, sending both men rolling backwards towards the stairwell. Adrian laughed in relief; the hanging plot had been foiled. "It's over, Trevor," he said softly, "Just come along and..."

Trevor seized the rifle where it lay nearby and walloped the detective across the face. "Don't move!" he ordered Jack and Charlie as they appeared in the doorway. Both men threw their hands up and obeyed. The gunman advanced back towards the platform. "I don't need to hang them; this is enough to take care of the job," he snickered, seizing hold of Natalie and placing the barrel to her temple, ignorant of her terrified whimpers, "Kiss her goodbye, Monk."

"STOP RIGHT THERE, ANTHONY!" Adrian's cry echoed around the platform. Trevor froze and slowly lowered the rifle. "What did you call me, Monk?" he asked roughly.

"That is who I'm talking to right now, isn't it? Crazy Anthony?" Adrian slowly walked towards him, swaying uneasily on his feet, "It's been Crazy Anthony for a while now, hasn't it? You're descended from Crazy Anthony Gunnison on his mother's side, that's how you came up with the name. I know what's going on, what brought it to this."

"You stay where you are, I'm not afraid to shoot!" Trevor aimed at him. Adrian, however, kept coming forward. "I know what you're guilty of, Anthony," he said softly, "Trevor Fleming is dead. You murdered him. He was too much of a hindrance to your plans. Here's what happened, from the beginning: you were born early in Trevor's life. Sharona made it quite clear over the years how his stepparents treated him with less than stellar respect. He was afraid of you, he tried to push you away, but you wouldn't leave him alone. You dogged him all through the years. Of course, you can't be blamed for everything; it was Trevor himself who gambled and womanized, and who gave into the threats of the six-fingered man to participate in the plot to kill my wife out of a sense of self-preservation."

His face contorted uncomfortably. "But still he did a remarkable just holding you back," he continued, "Then you met Fat Tony's friends. After that encounter, you were released and came to the forefront. And you started taking him over, convincing him that he was a victim of Sharona's actions and needed to get revenge. He was horrified by what he saw in you and tried to fight back, but as you got more powerful, you cowed him more and more. I talked to the real Trevor in Chicago, just before you destroyed him once and for all."

"I said stay back, Monk!" his opponent cocked the rifle. Adrian shook his head and kept coming forward. "Sometime between that moment in your rented house in Chicago and that night at the airport, you murdered Trevor for good," he said, "And with no checks or balances, you've gotten even more corrupt and powerful and convinced of the need for revenge. Yes, Anthony, I know who you are. And who you aren't."

"You don't know anything, Monk!" Trevor roared, but his hand was now starting to shake.

"You're not Trevor Fleming by any stretch of the imagination," Adrian stumbled noticeably; loss of blood was starting to severely weaken him, "Because the real Trevor Fleming would never even harbor the thought of endangering his son's life. The son he would do anything in the world for, even die for. I saw it with my own eyes, even though I didn't want to believe it then."

"And what do you care about that? You hated me with every ounce of your being!" his hand shook harder.

"You're right, I did," Adrian nodded softly, "I did hate Trevor Fleming irrationally, I'll admit it now. As far as I was concerned, he was the devil incarnate. And I was dead wrong. I was so busy trumping up his faults that I failed to see his good points, which he did have. But you, Anthony, have none of them. You're not even a human being. So I hope you're happy with your victory over him, even though you've got nothing out of it. Unless..."

He wretched and almost fell on his face, but righted himself at the last minute, "Unless of course, Trevor really isn't dead," he said firmly, staring him nemesis right in the eye, "I've seen ample hints on this trip he may be alive in there after all. It might well have been him crying out for help when you attacked Amy Seiderbaum. Wasn't it?"

Trevor's expression softened considerably, now more confusion than anger. "Listen to this man," Jack stepped forward from the stairwell, "He's a lot smarter than you realize. I can tell you there is no graver crime a man can commit than the betrayal of his son's trust; I know that firsthand."

"Why are you the one giving him that lecture; you don't know anything about this!" Sharona yelled at him.

"Mrs. Fleming, I know what I'm saying, you're going to have to trust me on this!" the hotelier unexpectedly yelled back. He looked Trevor right in the face and said, "Don't make the same mistake I did, pal. Trust can't be gained back overnight if you lose it, if you can ever get it back. Don't you remember the good things you've done with your boy? Don't you remember the feeling of excitement you felt when he came out of the operating room? Wasn't it the greatest feeling in the world to know that you made something so special? I forgot about that for forty years. Don't you go and do the same."

"This is your last warning, you two...!" he raised the gun again.

"No, it's yours," Adrian stepped right in front of the barrel and pushed it down, "You have to decide right now who's more powerful, Trevor or Anthony. This is the point of no return. I've done all I can for you. The final decision is all yours. What's it going to be?"

Trevor stared confusedly at the detective. Then he glanced down at the gun. Then back at the detective. Then over at his prisoners. "I love my father," Benjy's voice cut through the night, crackling but resolute, "I always have and I always will. But you're not him. I really want him back if you can find him for me."

Trevor glanced back down at the gun. Then back at his son. Then back at Adrian. Then he slumped his head into his hands. "It's all right, Trevor, I don't hate you anymore," Adrian put a hand on his shoulder, "I can get you help, we can still work this out, there can be a happy ending, you just have to..."

"NOOOO!" it was the harsh, cold voice that rang out through the night. Two more blasts into his chest sent Adrian flying onto his back. "Damn you Monk, now you went and turned him against me!" the carnal fires of hate burned in Trevor's eyes much to Adrian's sad despair. He brought the rifle down hard on Jack's skull, then pressed the gun right between Adrian's eyes. "Say hello to Trudy for me, Monk!" he hissed, putting his finger on the trigger. Adrian squeezed his eyes shut, anticipating the end. It had at least been worth a try...

ave tricked him again before the line gave way and he slammed full on into the wall.


	17. Holiday Redemption

But the final shot never came. Seconds later Adrian heard the rifle clatter to the ground. He glanced up to see that Trevor was now looking in horror at the large patch of ice on the deck next to them. As far as the detective could see, there was nothing to be seen in the ice but his adversary's reflection, which was a perfectly normal one at that. Whatever Trevor saw in his own reflection, however, was apparently too horrible for words. "What did you make me do!?" he mumbled in fear at the reflection, "OH GOD IN HEAVEN, WHAT DID YOU MAKE ME DO!!!!????"

"That's it, Trevor, fight Anthony's influence," Adrian urged him on out loud.

"DON'T LISTEN TO HIM YOU IDIOT!" it was definitely Trevor's voice that came out of his mouth, but somehow it seemed darker and less human, "IT'S ANOTHER ONE OF MONK'S TRICKS!! HE'S YOUR ENEMY! KILL HIM!!!!!"

He picked up the rifle again and took aim at the detective. "NOOO!!!!" Trevor's normal voice cried out as he jerked the gun up in the air at the last moment, "You've hurt enough people! I can't let you hurt anyone else!"

"THIS IS MONK!" screamed the darker voice, "HE RUINED YOUR LIFE!!!"

"Don't you get it!" screamed the good voice, throwing the gun away, "He didn't ruin my life; you ruined his! Can't you see what happened to him when he lost his wife!? No one should have to live through what he has to!!!"

The rifle clattered over to the stairwell, where Charlie scooped it up. He dashed over to his brother and pounded the handle against the handcuffs until they broke off. Don grabbed it and took aim at Trevor. "On the ground in three or I shoot and shoot hard!" he roared at his captor, "One, two...!!"

"NO WAIT!!!!" Adrian stumbled into the rifle's path, "He knows who killed Trudy!" He turned back to his adversary, "Tell me Trevor, who hired you to assist Tennyson!?"

But Trevor no longer seemed aware of anyone else's presence but his other self's. "Look at what you've done!!" he cried, gesturing at the prisoners still on the platform, "You tried to kill my wife, my son...!!"

"HE'S NOT YOUR SON!!!" bellowed the evil voice, "HE'S BETRAYED YOU AS MUCH AS SHE HAS!! YOU DON'T OWE HIM ANYTHING!!!"

"Yes I do!" Trevor's normal voice bellowed back defiantly as he drew a knife, "I owe it to him to make sure you can never hurt him or anyone else ever again And I will!!!"

He lunged forward towards the edge of the tower. "Watch it!" Jack yelled at the women and children, who froze up. There was a swishing, and everyone took notice that Trevor had cut the ropes to the nooses. He looked right at his bewildered wife and son with a deeply remorseful look. "I love you two so much, really I do," he whispered regretfully, "I'm so sorry I couldn't stop him before. Forgive me for everything if you possibly can. I hope this can help in some way. Just please don't forget me."

"NO, STOP, YOU FOOL!!" the evil voice cried out as he started climbing up on the railing. Adrian realized what was about to happen. "No Trevor, don't!!" he shouted, rushing as hard as he could across the observation deck, "Tell me who killed her!"

But he was too late. Trevor pitched himself over the side, his evil self screaming in terror all the way down. Adrian slumped in disappointment against the railing, saddened that it had to end this way. He dared to glance over the side. Even the briefest glimpse made it clear that only direct divine intervention was going to bring Trevor back this time. But yet, the detective wasn't all sad. He'd managed to save the man's soul in time, and he'd at least gone out in the light. That had to count for something.

This happened to be the last thought to enter his mind, for his strength now left him, and he slumped to the deck and entered the blackness.

* * *

He was back in the bright field when he woke up again. "It's all right, Adrian, you did good," came Trudy's happy voice above him. She helped him up and gave him a warm kiss. "I knew you would save everyone." 

"Is he...?" Adrian wanted to know.

"He'll be here eventually," she told him, "Thanks to you, he can now rest in peace like me. Come on, I want you to meet someone else you made happy today."

She took his wrist and led him over the nearest hill. Standing on the other side was an attractive middle-aged woman whom Adrian recognized even though he'd never seen her before. "So you're Margaret Eppes?" he greeted Don and Charlie's mother.

"Adrian Monk, thank you so much," she greeted him joyfully, "It just wouldn't have been right to meet my sons again so soon after..."

"I know, your husband told me what happened," Adrian related, blowing the white spores off a nearby dandelion after noting there was no way he could fix the odd number of spores without ruining the whole thing, "They, they did good too, I couldn't have solved this one without their help. You must still be proud."

"I am," Margaret nodded, deep pride embedded in her face, "Listen, I want to tell you, Monk, Trudy here's told me how you feel about her and life and relationships in general. I want to tell you, don't hold onto her too long. I told Charlie myself when I visited him a year or so ago, you can't hold on forever. You can't forget how to live, especially when you've got so many people who care for you down there, even if you aren't aware of how much they care."

"But can I go back?" Adrian once again checked for a non-existant pulse.

"It's your choice whether you do or not," Margaret informed him, "You could go back. Or you could stay here and never worry about a thing at all for the rest of eternity."

Adrian glanced at Trudy. "I'm sure you know, there've been days I'd give anything to be here now with you forever," he told his wife, taking her hand gently, "There were times all I wanted to do was join you again. But she's right, I know now; I still do have so much to do back there. I, I hope you're not disappointed at all."

"Why would I be disappointed?" she put a warm hand to his cheek, "There is no greater joy in human existence than living, Adrian. We have all eternity for each other. Besides, what fun would it be if you didn't worry about anything? Now go on, go back to the people you care for. And merry Christmas, Adrian."

She gave him another kiss, and the detective found himself slipping into the ground as if it were liquid.

* * *

His eyes slowly opened again. He was staring at the stark white ceiling of the hospital. There was a burst of tears to his left. "Oh thank God!" Jack threw his arms around his son, "Oh God, I thought I'd lost you again!" 

"I, I didn't want to go anywhere, Dad," Adrian hugged him tight, glad that he had gotten to know the man again, "Is, is everyone else all right?"

"Thanks to you, they certainly are," Ambrose was seated to his right. "Hey, come quick, he's awake again!" he called excitedly out the door. A small stampede ensued as the rest of Adrian's associates streamed in. Some of them had bandages on themselves, or needed walkers to get around, but they were going to live, and that was all Adrian cared about. "Welcome back, Mr. Monk," Julie gave him a huge relieved hug, "We were all so worried."

"Don't ever scare us like that again, Monk!" Stottlemeyer shouted in relief at him. His expression then noticeably brightened, "I know you and I, we don't get along well all the time, but I...what I'm saying is..."

He's saying you're like family to us, right Captain?" Disher finished the sentence for his superior. "Good to have you back, Monk," he shook the detective's hand warmly.

"Good, good to know you're all going to make it too," Adrian glanced at the window, where it was still snowing hard outside, "Is it Christmas Day?"

"Ten thirty in the morning on the most wonderful day of the year," Alan slid up and clapped the detective on the back, "I can't thank you enough, Monk, thanks to you I get to share the holidays with both my boys. I don't know how you managed to talk that guy out of it, but you're a genius in more ways than one."

"It, it was nothing, really, just something I've come to realize over the years," Adrian glanced around, "Where's...?"

"Good, you're awake," the nurse had entered, "It's time for your tetnus shot, Mr. Monk; we wouldn't want any infections from those bullet wounds, would we?"

She hefted a needle and squirted some liquid out the end. Adrian leaped a good ten feet in the air. "Ac, Actually, I'm, I'm, I'm just fine!" he said hyperactively, rushing, straight for the door, "You, you can find someone else to give it to, I'll, I'll get by good without it!"

He barrelled down the hall until he was sure he had lost her. When he braked to a stop, he was inside the visited room. It was there that he noticed Natalie was standing by the window with the Flemings and Turcottes. Fortunately, they seemed in reasonable condition given what they'd been through the previous night. He cautiously approached. "You, uh, taking everything all right?" he asked softly.

"Why didn't he tell me he had multiple personality disorder?" Sharona was actually crying over her husband's fate for the first time since Adrian had known her, "And why couldn't I see it? I could have gotten him help, I could have saved him before everything went..."

She couldn't finish. "You did everything you could," Natalie put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, "Some things you just can't see in time. It doesn't make you any less of a wife. Just remember when things were good, and you'll get through it. And remember, he'll still be alive as long as you remember him fondly. That's how I get through each and every day."

"She's right, that's how I do it too," Adrian nodded in agreement. He hesitantly bent down to the smaller figure right up against the window. "I'm, um, sorry it had to turn out this way, really I am," he told Benjy, "I meant what I said up there, I don't hate him anymore."

"I'm not upset, Mr. Monk," Benjy was in fact looking like a great weight had been lifted from him, "All I wanted for Christmas was to have him back for just one minute, and you gave it to me. For that I can't thank you enough."

Adrian smiled to know he'd done such a good service. "I, I couldn't have forgiven him if you hadn't for so long," he told the boy, "Maybe it's me who should be thanking you. You certainly do deserve praise for have the courage to take a stand against what he'd become. You should be glad; you're a man now."

"The type of man I happen to like," Becky put a warm arm around her boyfriend. The two of them shared a kiss that made their parents openly blanch and prompted Adrian to glance the other way and start whistling uncomfortably.

"Speaking of thanks," Jack had appeared behind them and was now giving Sharona a raised eyebrow, "Don't I get some for helping him save the day last night?"

The nurse shook her head. "OK, I think I might have stereotyped you a little too much," she conceded, "And that maybe you have learned your lesson and become a better man after all. I still find the fact that you abandoned Adrian for forty years reprehensible, though, and if you think that..."

"Mom, let it go," Benjy took her hand, "It's Christmas."

"Christmas. The day of peace and love for your fellow man," the Eppeses were approaching with coffee cups in their hands. "Good to see you back on your feet, Monk," Don greeted him with a hearty handshake, "I'm still wondering, how'd you know you could reach him by pointing out what he'd turned into?"

"I, uh, I didn't," Adrian admitted, "I was basically guessing."

"Oh," the color drained briefly from Don's face at the thought that it was luck that had spared them. "I think what Mr. Monk is trying to say is that Mr. Fleming merely corrected his affection pattern," Charlie attempted to clear it up.

"His what?" Natalie was completely confused.

"Well, if you buy my book on the mathematics of relationships, you'll know for sure," the mathmetician said, "But in a nutshell, I guess his mind came to realize that the accepted formula for a healthy familial relationship is to unconditionally love everyone, and compensated for the errors he had made in one fell swoop. Much like when you proofread the rough draft of a novel and correct all the spelling mistakes."

"Yep, that's basically it," his father agreed as he and others joined them at the window, "I think all fathers love their children all the time, sometimes they just let other things cloud their memories of it. But like so much else, it's not really how you start, it's how you finish that matters, that how I think of it."

"Exactly," Mr. Turcotte spoke up, "That's why I quit the C.I.A. this morning while you were all getting treatment. I don't want to miss anything else with the best thing that ever happened to me."

He hugged a smiling Becky close. Adrian nodded in contented affirmation. He looked out the window at the snow blanketing everything in a peaceful blanket of white. "You know what I think?" he asked out loud.

"What?" Ambrose asked him.

"I think for today, I'm the wealthiest man in the world," the detective sighed in delight, putting an arm around his father and brother. "Nothing else really matters as long as you're with the people you care for at Christmas."

He was surprised that no one commented on how strange it was for him to be saying something like this. Instead, the looked like they agreed completely. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement behind them. Apparently he was the only one to notice, for no one else turned with him to see Trudy and Mitch standing by the Christmas tree, smiling at him. Then, without warning, Trevor faded in between them. He glanced at Trudy with regretful eyes, looking much like he felt he didn't belong to be there. Trudy, however, put a hand on his shoulder and nodded in forgiveness. Mitch patted him on the back and did the same. "Welcome home," Adrian whispered, flashing a thumbs-up at his former nemesis, who breathed, "Thank you, Monk," at him, "Just be there for them when they need you, promise me that."

"Who are you talking to, Monk?" Disher glanced at the tree, clearly not seeing what the detective did. Before Adrian could say anything, an orderly came towards them with a phone. "Adrian Monk, call from Hawaii," he told him.

"Oh, I've, I've got it," Adrian gestured to Natalie for a wipe and scrubbed the phone down before handling it, "Mer, Merry Christmas Dr. Kroger," he told his psychiatrist over the line.

"Merry Christmas, Adrian," Dr. Kroger greeted him from Hawaii, "I've heard you've made a lot of good things happen this week."

"Well, I, I had help," Adrian admitted, "And you'll be meeting the people who helped me soon on a station near..."

"Is that him calling!?" came an all too familiar voice in the background. "Him!?" Adrian's jaw dropped, "He's there with you!?"

"Merry Christmas, sap," Harold's voice sneered over the phone, "Chuck invited me personally to come with him to Hawaii."

"You!" Adrian's blood pressure was going way up, "You sick, twisted fiend! Your depravity knows no boundaries, does it!?"

"Adrian, please, calm down..." Dr. Kroger tried to get him to relax.

"He says having my company's the greatest gift he could hope for," Harold arrogantly boasted.

"All right, that does it, you and me, in the parking lot of the center the moment we get back!" Adrian roared at Harold, "You'll be sorry that you ever decided to darken Dr. Kroger's appointment book when I get through with you!"

"Go stick your head in crocodile's mouth!" Harold taunted him. Adrian roared in rage. Stottlemeyer rolled his eyes. "Yeah, nice peaceful day, Christmas is," he muttered out loud, "Who's up for breakfast?"

"Absolutely," Don nodded in agreement, "Come on Monk, you must be hungry too."

He took the detective by the arm and gently led him towards the door, ignoring the detective's final defiant bellow at the phone, "Here's a little place you can go for Christmas, Harold: H-E-L-L! Yes, you heard me, Krenshaw, BURN IN HELL!!!"

THE END

AND A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL


End file.
